Duel: Terror Stories

  She was lying there on her back, her hands pressed to her stomach. It was moving. He watched the flesh ripple under the thinness of her nightgown. She should have been chilled without any blankets but she seemed warm. The bedside lamp was still on, the book—Science and Sanity, Korzjbski—fallen from her fingers and lying half open on the mattress.

  It was her face. Sweat drops dotted it like hundreds of tiny crystals. Her lips were drawn back from her teeth.

  Her eyes wide open.

  “Kin of the night, sickened of this pit, 0 send me not to make the way!”

  He felt a horrible fascination in standing there listening to her. But she was in pain. It was obvious from her whitened skin, the way her hands, like claws, raked the sheet at her sides into mounds of wadded, sweat-streaked cotton.

  “I cry, I cry,” she said. “Rhyuio Gklemmo Fglwo!”

  He slapped her face and her body lurched on the bed.

  “He again, the hurting one!”

  Her lips spread wide in a scream. He slapped her again and focus came to her eyes. She lay there staring up at him in complete horror. Her hands jumped to her cheeks, pressing against them. She seemed to recoil into the bed. Her pupils shrank to pinpoints in the milk-white of her eyes.

  “No,” she said. “No!”

  “Ann, it’s me, David! You’re all right!”

  She looked uncomprehendingly at him for a long moment, her breasts heaving with tortured breaths.

  Then, suddenly, she was relaxed and recognized him. Her lower jaw went slack and a moan of relief filled her throat.

  He sat down beside her and took her in his arms. She clung to him, crying, her face into his chest.

  “All right, baby, let it out, let it out.”

  Again. The choking off of sobs, the suddenly dried eyes, the pulling away from him, the blank look.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  No answer. She stared at him.

  “Baby, what is it? Why can’t you cry?”

  Something crossed her face, then slipped away.

  “Baby, you should cry.”

  “I don’t want to cry.”

  “Why not?”

  “He won’t let me,” she blurted out.

  Suddenly, they were both silent, staring at each other and, he knew, in an instant, that they were very close to the answer.

  “He?” he asked.

  “No,” she said suddenly, “I don’t mean it. I don’t mean that. I don’t mean he, I mean something else.”

  For a long time they sat there looking at each other. Then speaking no more, he made her lie down and covered her up. He got a blanket and stayed the rest of the night in the chair by the bureau. When he woke up in the morning, cramped and cold, he saw that she’d thrown off the blankets again.

  Kleinman told him that Ann had adjusted to cold. There seemed to be something added to her system which was sending out heat to her when she needed it.

  “And all this salt she takes.” Kleinman threw up his hands. “It is beyond sense. You would think the child thrives on a saline diet. Yet she no longer gains excess weight. She does not drink water to combat the thirst. What does she do to ease the thirst?”

  “Nothing,” Collier said. “She’s always thirsty.”

  “And the reading, it goes on?”

  “Yes,” said Collier.

  “And the talking in her sleep?”

  “Yes.”

  Kleinman shook his head.

  “Never in my life,” he said, “have I seen a pregnancy like this.”

  She finished up the last of the huge pile she’d been constantly augmenting. She took all the books back to the library.

  A new development began.

  She was seven months pregnant. It was May and Collier noticed that the car’s oil was filthy, the tires were unnaturally worn, and a dent was in the left rear fender.

  “Have you been using the car?” he asked her one Saturday morning. It was in the living room, the phonograph was playing Brahms.

  “Why?” she asked. He told her and she said irritably, “If you already know, why do you ask me?”

  “Have you?”

  “Yes. I’ve been using the car. Is that permissible?”

  “You needn’t be sarcastic.”

  “Oh no,” she said angrily. “I needn’t get sarcastic. I’ve been pregnant seven months and not once have you believed that some other man isn’t the father. No matter how many times I’ve told you that I’m innocent, you still won’t say—I believe you. And I’m sarcastic. Oh, honest, David, you’re a panic, a real panic.”

  She stamped over to the phonograph and turned it off.

  “I’m listening to it,” he said.

  “That’s too bad. I don’t like it.”

  “Since when?”

  “Oh, leave me alone.”

  He caught her by the wrist as she turned away.

  “Listen,” he said, “maybe you think the whole thing has been a vacation for me. I come home from six months research and find you pregnant. Not by me! I don’t care what you say, I’m not the father and I nor anyone else knows any way but one for a woman to get pregnant. Still I haven’t left. I’ve watched you turn into a book-reading machine. I’ve had to clean the house when I could, cook most of the meals, take care of our clothes—as well as teach every day at the college. I’ve had to look over you as I would a child, keeping you from kicking off the blankets, keeping you from eating too much salt, from drinking too much water, too much coffee, from smoking too much …”

  “I’ve stopped smoking myself,” she said, pulling away.

  “Why?” he threw at her suddenly. She looked blank.

  “Go ahead,” he said, “say it. Because he doesn’t like it.”

  “I stopped smoking myself,” she repeated. “I can’t stand them.”

  “And now you don’t like music.”

  “It … hurts my stomach,” she said, vaguely.

  “Nonsense,” he said.

  Before he could stop her, she’d gone out the front door into the blazing sunlight. He went to the door and watched her get into the car clumsily. He started to call to her but she’d started the motor and couldn’t hear him. He watched the car disappear up the block doing fifty in second gear.

  “How long has she been gone now?” Johnny asked.

  Collier glanced nervously at his watch.

  “I don’t know exactly,” he said. “Since around nine-thirty, I guess. We’d argued, as I said …”

  He broke off nervously and checked his watch again. It was past midnight.

  “How long has she been driving like this?” Johnny asked.

  “I don’t know, Johnny. I told you I just found out.”

  “Doesn’t her size … ?” started Johnny.

  “No, the baby isn’t big anymore.” Collier spoke the astounding now in a matter-of-fact voice. He ran a shaky hand through his hair.

  “You think we should call the police?” he asked.

  “Wait a little.”

  “What if she’s had an accident?” Collier said. “She’s not the best driver in the world. Why in God’s name did I let her go? Seven months pregnant and I let her go driving. Oh, I ought to be …”

  He felt himself getting ready to crack. All this tension in his house, this strange and endlessly distressing pregnancy—it was getting to him. A man couldn’t hold onto tension for seven months and not feel it. He could not keep his hands from shaking anymore. He’d developed a habit of persistent blinking to use up some of the nervous energy.

  He paced across the rug to the fireplace and stood there tapping his nails nervously on the shelf.

  “I think we should call the police,” he said.

  “Take it easy,” Johnny warned.

  “What would you advise?” Collier snapped.

  “Sit down. Right there. That’s it. Now, relax. She’s all right, believe me. I’m not worried about Ann. She’s probably had a flat or an engine failure somewhere in the middle of nowhere. How ma
ny times have I heard you go on about needing a new battery? It probably died, that’s all.”

  “Well … wouldn’t the police be able to find her a lot quicker?”

  “All right, boy, if it’ll make you happier, I’ll call them.”

  Collier nodded, then started up as a car passed in the street. He rushed to the window and drew back the blinds. Then he bit his lips and turned back. He went back to the fireplace while Johnny moved for the hall phone. He listened to Johnny dialing, then twitched as the receiver was put down hurriedly.

  “Here she is,” Johnny said.

  They led her into the front room, dizzy and confused. She didn’t answer Collier’s frantic questions. She headed straight for the kitchen as if she didn’t notice them.

  “Coffee,” she said in a guttural voice.

  At first Collier tried to stop her, then he felt Johnny’s hand on his arm.

  “Let her go,” Johnny said. “It’s time we got to the bottom of this.”

  She stood in front of the stove and turned the flame up high under the coffee pot. She ladled in careless spoonfuls, then slammed on the lid, and stood looking down at it studiedly.

  Collier started to say something but, once more, Johnny restrained him. Collier stood restively in the kitchen doorway, watching his wife.

  When the brown liquid started popping up into the dome, Ann grabbed the pot off the stove without using a potholder. Collier drew in his breath and gritted his teeth.

  She poured out the steaming liquid and it sloshed up the sides of the used cup on the table. Then she slammed down the pot and reached hungrily for the cup.

  She finished the whole pot in ten minutes.

  She drank without cream or sugar, as if she didn’t care what it tasted like. As if she didn’t taste it at all.

  Only when she’d finished did her face relax. She slumped back in the chair and sat there a long time. They watched her in silence.

  Then she looked up at them and giggled.

  She pushed up and fell against the table. Collier heard Johnny draw in sudden breath.

  “My God,” he said, “she’s drunk!”

  She was a heavy unwieldy form to get up the stairs, especially since she gave them no assistance. She kept humming to herself—a strange, discordant melody that seemed to move in indefinable tone steps, repeated and repeated like the sound of low wind. There was a beatific smile on her face.

  “A lot of good that did,” Collier muttered.

  “Be patient, be patient,” Johnny whispered back.

  “Easy enough for you to …”

  “Shhh,” Johnny quieted him but Ann didn’t hear a word they said.

  She stopped humming as soon as they put her down on the bed and fell into a deep sleep before they straightened up. Collier drew a thin blanket over her and put a pillow under her head. She didn’t stir as he lifted her head.

  Then the two men stood in silence beside the bed. Collier looked down at the wife he no longer understood. His mind swam with painful discordances and, through them all, burned the horrible strain of doubt that had never left him. Who was the father of her child? Even though he couldn’t leave her, even though he felt a great loving pity for her—they could never be close again until he knew.

  “I wonder where she goes?” Johnny asked. “When she drives, I mean.

  “I don’t know.” Sullenly.

  “She must have gone pretty far to wear down the tires so much. I wonder if …”

  That was when she started again.

  “Send me not,” she said.

  Johnny gripped Collier’s arm.

  “Is that it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Black, black, drive me out, horror in these shores, heavy, heavy.”

  Collier shuddered.

  “That’s it,” he said.

  Johnny knelt hurriedly beside the bed and listened carefully.

  “Breathe me, implore my fathers, seek me out in washing pain, send me not to make the way.”

  Johnny stared at Ann’s taut features. She looked as if she were in pain again. And yet it was not her face, Collier suddenly realized. The expression wasn’t hers.

  Ann threw off the blanket and thrashed on the bed, sweat breaking out on her face.

  “To walk on shores of orange sea, cool, to tread the crimson fields, cool, to raft on silent waters, cool, to ride upon the desertland, cool, return me fathers of my fathers, Rhyuio Gklemmo Fglwo.”

  Then she was silent except for tiny groans. At her sides, her hands clutched the sheets and her breaths were labored and uneven.

  Johnny straightened up and looked at Collier. Neither of them spoke a word.

  They sat with Kleinman.

  “What you suggest is fantastic,” the doctor said.

  “Listen,” Johnny said. “Let’s run it down. One—the excess saline requirements, not the requirements of a normal pregnancy. Two—the cold, the way Ann’s body adjusted to it, the way she was cured of pneumonia in minutes.”

  Collier sat staring numbly at his friend.

  “All right,” Johnny said, “first the salt. In the beginning it made Ann drink too much water. She gained weight and then her weight endangered the child. What happened? She no longer was allowed to drink water.”

  “Allowed?” Collier asked.

  “Let me finish,” Johnny said. “About the cold; it was as if the child needed cold and forced Ann to stay cold—until it realized that by acquiring itself some comfort it was endangering the very vessel it lived in. So it cured the vessel of pneumonia. It adjusted the vessel to cold.”

  “You talk as though …” Kleinman started.

  “The effects of cigarettes,” Johnny said. “Excuse me, doctor. Ann might have smoked in moderation without endangering herself or the child. Yet she stopped altogether. It might have been an ethical point, true. Again, it might be that the child reacted violently to nicotine, and, in a sense, forbade her to …”

  Kleinman interrupted irritably.

  “You talk as if the child were directing its mother rather than being helpless, subject to its mother’s actions.”

  “Helpless?” was all Johnny said.

  Kleinman didn’t go on. He pressed his lips together in annoyed surrender and tapped nervously on his desk. Johnny waited a moment and then, seeing that Kleinman wasn’t going to continue, he went on.

  “Three—the aversion to music which she once loved. Why? Because it was music? I don’t think so. Because of the vibrations. Vibrations which a normal child wouldn’t even notice being so insulated from sound not only by the layers of its mother’s epidermis and the amniotic fluid but by the very structure of its own hearing apparatus. Apparently, this … child … has much keener hearing.

  “The coffee,” he said. “It made her drunk. Or—it made it drunk.”

  “Now wait,” Collier started, then broke off.

  “And now,” Johnny said, “as to her reading. It fits in too. All those books—more or less the basic works in every field of knowledge, a seemingly calculated study of mankind and his every thought.”

  “What are you driving at?” Collier spoke nervously.

  “Think, Dave! All these things. The reading, the trips in the car. As if she were trying to get as much information as she could about life in our civilization. As if the child were …”

  “You are not implying that the child was …” Kleinman began.

  “Child?” Johnny said grimly. “I think we can stop referring to it as a child. Perhaps the body is childlike. But the mind—never.”

  They were deadly silent. Collier felt his heart pulsing strangely in his chest.

  “Listen,” Johnny said. “Last night Ann—or the … it—was drunk. Why? Maybe because of what it’s learned, what it’s seen. I hope so. Maybe it was sick and wanted to forget.”

  He leaned forward.

  “Those visions Ann had; I think they tell the story—as crazy as it is. The deserts, the marshes, the crimson fields. Add th
e cold. Only one thing wasn’t mentioned and I think that’s probably because they don’t exist.”

  “What?” Collier asked, reality scaling away from him.

  “The canals,” Johnny said. “Ann has a Martian in her womb.”

  For a long time they looked at him in incredulous silence. Then both started talking at once, protesting with nervous horror in their voices. Johnny waited until the first spasm of their words had passed.

  “Is there a better answer?” he asked.

  “But … how?” Kleinman asked heatedly. “How could such a pregnancy be effected?”

  “I don’t know,” Johnny said. “But why? I think I know.”

  Collier was afraid to ask.

  “All through the years,” Johnny said, “There’s been no end of talk and writing about the Martians, about flying saucers. Books, stories, movies, articles—always with the same theme.”

  “I don’t …” Collier began.

  “I think the invasion has finally come,” Johnny said. “At least a tryout. I think this is their first attempt, an insidious, cruel attempt—invasion by flesh. To place an adult life cell from their own planet into the body of an Earth woman. Then, when this fully matured Martian mind is coupled to the form of an Earth child—the process of conquest begins. This is their experiment, I think, their test. If it works …”

  He didn’t finish.

  “But … oh, that’s insane,” Collier said, trying to push away the fear that was crowding him in.

  “So is her reading,” said Johnny. “So are her trips in the car. So is her coffee drinking and her dislike of music and her pneumonia healing and her standing out in the cold and the reduction of body size and the visions and that crazy toneless song she sang. What do you want, Dave … a blueprint?”

  Kleinman stood up and went to his filing cabinets. He pulled out a drawer and came back to the desk with a folder in his hand.

  “I have had this in my files for three weeks now,” he said. “I have not told you. I did not know how. But this information, this theory,” he quickly amended, “compels me to …”

  He pushed the x-ray slide across the desk to them.