Paycheck

  Mrs Walton served the frozen peas. ‘Ted,’ she said, as she slowly took her seat, ‘is there anything on your mind?’

  ‘On my mind?’ He blinked. ‘No, nothing unusual. Just the regular stuff. Why?’

  Uneasily, June Walton glanced over at her son. Charles was sitting bolt-upright at his place, face expressionless, white as chalk. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t unfolded his napkin or even touched his milk. A tension was in the air; she could feel it. Charles had pulled his chair away from his father’s; he was huddled in a tense little bundle as far from his father as possible. His lips were moving, but she couldn’t catch what he was saying.

  ‘What is it?’ she demanded, leaning toward him.

  ‘The other one,’ Charles was muttering under his breath. ‘The other one came in.’

  ‘What do you mean, dear?’ June Walton asked out loud. ‘What other one?’

  Ted jerked. A strange expression flitted across his face. It vanished at once; but in the brief instant Ted Walton’s face lost all familiarity. Something alien and cold gleamed out, a twisting, wriggling mass. The eyes blurred and receded, as an archaic sheen filmed over them. The ordinary look of a tired, middle-aged husband was gone.

  And then it was back - or nearly back. Ted grinned and began to wolf down his stew and frozen peas and creamed corn. He laughed, stirred his coffee, kidded and ate. But something terrible was wrong.

  ‘The other one,’ Charles muttered, face white, hands beginning to tremble. Suddenly he leaped up and backed away from the table. ‘Get away!’ he shouted. ‘Get out of here!’

  ‘Hey,’ Ted rumbled ominously. ‘What’s got into you?’ He pointed sternly at the boy’s chair. ‘You sit down there and eat your dinner, young man. Your mother didn’t fix it for nothing.’

  Charles turned and ran out of the kitchen, upstairs to his room. June Walton gasped and fluttered in dismay. ‘What in the world—’

  Ted went on eating. His face was grim; his eyes were hard and dark. ‘That kid,’ he grated, ‘is going to have to learn a few things. Maybe he and I need to have a little private conference together.’

  Charles crouched and listened.

  The father-thing was coming up the stairs, nearer and nearer. ‘Charles!’ it shouted angrily. ‘Are you up there?’

  He didn’t answer. Soundlessly, he moved back into his room and pulled the door shut. His heart was pounding heavily. The father-thing had reached the landing; in a moment it would come in his room.

  He hurried to the window. He was terrified; it was already fumbling in the dark hall for the knob. He lifted the window and climbed out on the roof. With a grunt he dropped into the flower garden that ran by the front door, staggered and gasped, then leaped to his feet and ran from the light that streamed out the window, a patch of yellow in the evening darkness.

  He found the garage; it loomed up ahead, a black square against the skyline. Breathing quickly, he fumbled in his pocket for his flashlight, then cautiously slid the door up and entered.

  The garage was empty. The car was parked out front. To the left was his father’s workbench. Hammers and saws on the wooden walls. In the back were the lawnmower, rake, shovel, hoe. A drum of kerosene. License plates nailed up everywhere. Floor was concrete and dirt; a great oil slick stained the center, tufts of weeds greasy and black in the flickering beam of the flashlight.

  Just inside the door was a big trash barrel. On top of the barrel were stacks of soggy newspapers and magazines, moldy and damp. A thick stench of decay issued from them as Charles began to move them around. Spiders dropped to the cement and scampered off; he crushed them with his foot and went on looking.

  The sight made him shriek. He dropped the flashlight and leaped wildly back. The garage was plunged into instant gloom. He forced himself to kneel down, and for an ageless moment he groped in the darkness for the light, among the spiders and greasy weeds. Finally he had it again. He managed to turn the beam down into the barrel, down the well he had made by pushing back the piles of magazines.

  The father-thing had stuffed it down in the very bottom of the barrel. Among the old leaves and torn-up cardboard, the rotting remains of magazines and curtains, rubbish from the attic his mother had lugged down here with the idea of burning someday. It still looked a little like his father enough for him to recognize. He had found it - and the sight made him sick at his stomach. He hung onto the barrel and shut his eyes until finally he was able to look again. In the barrel were the remains of his father, his real father. Bits the father-thing had no use for. Bits it had discarded.

  He got the rake and pushed it down to stir the remains. They were dry. They cracked and broke at the touch of the rake. They were like a discarded snake skin, flaky and crumbling, rustling at the touch. An empty skin. The insides were gone. The important part. This was all that remained, just the brittle, cracking skin, wadded down at the bottom of the trash barrel in a little heap. This was all the father-thing had left; it had eaten the rest. Taken the insides - and his father’s place.

  A sound.

  He dropped the rake and hurried to the door. The father-thing was coming down the path, toward the garage. Its shoes crushed the gravel; it felt its way along uncertainly. ‘Charles!’ it called angrily. ‘Are you in there? Wait’ll I get my hands on you, young man!’

  His mother’s ample, nervous shape was outlined in the bright doorway of the house. ‘Ted, please don’t hurt him. He’s all upset about something.’

  ‘I’m not going to hurt him,’ the father-thing rasped; it halted to strike a match. ‘I’m just going to have a little talk with him. He needs to learn better manners. Leaving the table like that and running out at night, climbing down the roof—’

  Charles slipped from the garage; the glare of the match caught his moving shape, and with a bellow the father-thing lunged forward.

  ‘Come here!’

  Charles ran. He knew the ground better than the father-thing; it knew a lot, had taken a lot when it got his father’s insides, but nobody knew the way like he did. He reached the fence, climbed it, leaped into the Andersons’ yard, raced past their clothesline, down the path around the side of their house, and out on Maple Street.

  He listened, crouched down and not breathing. The father-thing hadn’t come after him. It had gone back. Or it was coming around the sidewalk.

  He took a deep, shuddering breath. He had to keep moving. Sooner or later it would find him. He glanced right and left, made sure it wasn’t watching, and then started off at a rapid dog-trot.

  ‘What do you want?’ Tony Peretti demanded belligerently. Tony was fourteen. He was sitting at the table in the oakpanelled Peretti dining room, books and pencils scattered around him, half a ham-and-peanut-butter sandwich and a Coke beside him. ‘You’re Walton, aren’t you?’

  Tony Peretti had a job uncrating stoves and refrigerators after school at Johnson’s Appliance Shop, downtown. He was big and blunt-faced. Black hair, olive skin, white teeth. A couple of times he had beaten up Charles; he had beaten up every kid in the neighborhood.

  Charles twisted. ‘Say, Peretti. Do me a favor?’

  ‘What do you want?’ Peretti was annoyed. ‘You looking for a bruise?’

  Gazing unhappily down, his fists clenched, Charles explained what had happened in short, mumbled words.

  When he had finished, Peretti let out a low whistle. ‘No kidding.’

  ‘It’s true.’ He nodded quickly. ‘I’ll show you. Come on and I’ll show you.’

  Peretti got slowly to his feet. ‘Yeah, show me. I want to see.’

  He got his b.b. gun from his room, and the two of them walked silently up the dark street, toward Charles’ house. Neither of them said much. Peretti was deep in thought, serious and solemn-faced. Charles was still dazed; his mind was completely blank.

  They turned down the Anderson driveway, cut through the back yard, climbed the fence, and lowered themselves cautiously into Charles’ back yard. There was no movement. The yard was silent. The front door o
f the house was closed.

  They peered through the living room window. The shades were down, but a narrow crack of yellow streamed out. Sitting on the couch was Mrs Walton, sewing a cotton T-shirt. There was a sad, troubled look on her large face. She worked listlessly, without interest. Opposite her was the father-thing. Leaning back in his father’s easy chair, its shoes off, reading the evening newspaper. The TV was on, playing to itself in the corner. A can of beer rested on the arm of the easy chair. The father-thing sat exactly as his own father had sat; it had learned a lot.

  ‘Looks just like him,’ Peretti whispered suspiciously. ‘You sure you’re not bulling me?’

  Charles led him to the garage and showed him the trash barrel. Peretti reached his long tanned arms down and carefully pulled up the dry, flaking remains. They spread out, unfolded, until the whole figure of his father was outlined. Peretti laid the remains on the floor and pieced broken parts back into place. The remains were colorless. Almost transparent. An amber yellow, thin as paper. Dry and utterly lifeless.

  ‘That’s all,’ Charles said. Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘That’s all that’s left of him. The thing has the insides.’

  Peretti had turned pale. Shakily, he crammed the remains back in the trash barrel. ‘This is really something,’ he muttered. ‘You say you saw the two of them together?’

  ‘Talking. They looked exactly alike. I ran inside.’ Charles wiped the tears away and sniveled; he couldn’t hold it back any longer. ‘It ate him while I was inside. Then it came in the house. It pretended it was him. But it isn’t. It killed him and ate his insides.’

  For a moment Peretti was silent. ‘I’ll tell you something,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve heard about this sort of thing. It’s a bad business. You have to use your head and not get scared. You’re not scared, are you?’

  ‘No,’ Charles managed to mutter.

  ‘The first thing we have to do is figure out how to kill it.’ He rattled his b.b. gun. ‘I don’t know if this’ll work. It must be plenty tough to get hold of your father. He was a big man.’ Peretti considered. ‘Let’s get out of here. It might come back. They say that’s what a murderer does.’

  They left the garage. Peretti crouched down and peeked through the window again. Mrs Walton had got to her feet. She was talking anxiously. Vague sounds filtered out. The father-thing threw down its newspaper. They were arguing.

  ‘For God’s sake!’ the father-thing shouted. ‘Don’t do anything stupid like that.’

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ Mrs Walton moaned. ‘Something terrible. Just let me call the hospital and see.’

  ‘Don’t call anybody. He’s all right. Probably up the street playing.’

  ‘He’s never out this late. He never disobeys. He was terribly upset - afraid of you! I don’t blame him.’ Her voice broke with misery. ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re so strange.’ She moved out of the room, into the hall. ‘I’m going to call some of the neighbors.’

  The father-thing glared after her until she had disappeared. Then a terrifying thing happened. Charles gasped; even Peretti grunted under his breath.

  ‘Look,’ Charles muttered. ‘What—’

  ‘Golly,’ Peretti said, black eyes wide.

  As soon as Mrs Walton was gone from the room, the father-thing sagged in its chair. It became limp. Its mouth fell open. Its eyes peered vacantly. Its head fell forward, like a discarded rag doll.

  Peretti moved away from the window. ‘That’s it,’ he whispered. ‘That’s the whole thing.’

  ‘What is it?’ Charles demanded. He was shocked and bewildered. ‘It looked like somebody turned off its power.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Peretti nodded slowly, grim and shaken. ‘It’s controlled from outside.’

  Horror settled over Charles. ‘You mean, something outside our world?’

  Peretti shook his head with disgust. ‘Outside the house! In the yard. You know how to find?’

  ‘Not very well.’ Charles pulled his mind together. ‘But I know somebody who’s good at finding.’ He forced his mind to summon the name. ‘Bobby Daniels.’

  ‘That little black kid? Is he good at finding?’

  ‘The best.’

  ‘All right,’ Peretti said. ‘Let’s go get him. We have to find the thing that’s outside. That made it in there, and keeps it going …’

  ‘It’s near the garage,’ Peretti said to the small, thin-faced Negro boy who crouched beside them in the darkness. ‘When it got him, he was in the garage. So look there.’

  ‘In the garage?’ Daniels asked.

  ‘Around the garage. Walton’s already gone over the garage, inside. Look around outside. Nearby.’

  There was a small bed of flowers growing by the garage, and a great tangle of bamboo and discarded debris between the garage and the back of the house. The moon had come out; a cold, misty light filtered down over everything. ‘If we don’t find it pretty soon,’ Daniels said, ‘I got to go back home. I can’t stay up much later.’ He wasn’t any older than Charles. Perhaps nine.

  ‘All right,’ Peretti agreed. ‘Then get looking.’

  The three of them spread out and began to go over the ground with care. Daniels worked with incredible speed; his thin little body moved in a blur of motion as he crawled among the flowers, turned over rocks, peered under the house, separated stalks of plants, ran his expert hands over leaves and stems, in tangles of compost and weeds. No inch was missed.

  Peretti halted after a short time. ‘I’ll guard. It might be dangerous. The father-thing might come and try to stop us.’ He posted himself on the back step with his b.b. gun while Charles and Bobby Daniels searched. Charles worked slowly. He was tired, and his body was cold and numb. It seemed impossible, the father-thing and what had happened to his own father, his real father. But terror spurred him on; what if it happened to his mother, or to him? Or to everyone? Maybe the whole world.

  ‘I found it!’ Daniels called in a thin, high voice. ‘You all come around here quick!’

  Peretti raised his gun and got up cautiously. Charles hurried over; he turned the flickering yellow beam of his flashlight where Daniels stood.

  The Negro boy had raised a concrete stone. In the moist, rotting soil the light gleamed on a metallic body. A thin, jointed thing with endless crooked legs was digging frantically. Plated, like an ant; a red-brown bug that rapidly disappeared before their eyes. Its rows of legs scabbed and clutched. The ground gave rapidly under it. Its wicked-looking tail twisted furiously as it struggled down the tunnel it had made.

  Peretti ran into the garage and grabbed up the rake. He pinned down the tail of the bug with it. ‘Quick! Shoot it with the b.b. gun!’

  Daniels snatched the gun and took aim. The first shot tore the tail of the bug loose. It writhed and twisted frantically; its tail dragged uselessly and some of its legs broke off. It was a foot long, like a great millipede. It struggled desperately to escape down its hole.

  ‘Shoot again,’ Peretti ordered.

  Daniels fumbled with the gun. The bug slithered and hissed. Its head jerked back and forth; it twisted and bit at the rake holding it down. Its wicked specks of eyes gleamed with hatred. For a moment it struck futilely at the rake; then abruptly, without warning, it thrashed in a frantic convulsion that made them all draw away in fear.

  Something buzzed through Charles’ brain. A loud humming, metallic and harsh, a billion metal wires dancing and vibrating at once. He was tossed about violently by the force; the banging crash of metal made him deaf and confused. He stumbled to his feet and backed off; the others were doing the same, white-faced and shaken.

  ‘If we can’t kill it with the gun,’ Peretti gasped, ‘we can drown it. Or burn it. Or stick a pin through its brain.’ He fought to hold onto the rake, to keep the bug pinned down.

  ‘I have a jar of formaldehyde,’ Daniels muttered. His fingers fumbled nervously with the b.b. gun. ‘How do this thing work? I can’t seem to—’

  Charles grabbed the gun from him. ‘I’l
l kill it.’ He squatted down, one eye to the sight, and gripped the trigger. The bug lashed and struggled. Its force-field hammered in his ears, but he hung onto the gun. His finger tightened …

  ‘All right, Charles,’ the father-thing said. Powerful fingers gripped him, a paralyzing pressure around his wrists. The gun fell to the ground as he struggled futilely. The father-thing shoved against Peretti. The boy leaped away and the bug, free of the rake, slithered triumphantly down its tunnel.

  ‘You have a spanking coming, Charles,’ the father-thing droned on. ‘What got into you? Your poor mother’s out of her mind with worry.’

  It had been there, hiding in the shadows. Crouched in the darkness watching them. Its calm, emotionless voice, a dreadful parody of his father’s, rumbled close to his ear as it pulled him relentlessly toward the garage. Its cold breath blew in his face, an icy-sweet odor, like decaying soil. Its strength was immense; there was nothing he could do.

  ‘Don’t fight me,’ it said calmly. ‘Come along, into the garage. This is for your own good. I know best, Charles.’

  ‘Did you find him?’ his mother called anxiously, opening the back door.

  ‘Yes, I found him.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘A little spanking.’ The father-thing pushed up the garage door. ‘In the garage.’ In the half-light a faint smile, humorless and utterly without emotion, touched its lips. ‘You go back in the living room, June. I’ll take care of this. It’s more in my line. You never did like punishing him.’

  The back door reluctantly closed. As the light cut off, Peretti bent down and groped for the b.b. gun. The father-thing instantly froze.