Backteria and Other Improbable Tales

“I’ll see who it is,” Don said.

  He moved silently across the living room rug and she followed a few feet, then stopped. He stood against the wall and looked out through the window curtains. Rays of light from the street lamp fell across the brick porch.

  “Can you see?” she asked as quietly as she could. “Is it him?”

  He took a heavy, shaking breath in the darkness. “It’s him.”

  She stood in the middle of the living room and it seemed as if all the heat in the house had suddenly disappeared. She shuddered.

  The doorbell kept ringing.

  “Maybe it’s the police,” she said nervously.

  “No. It’s not.”

  They stood there silently a moment and the buzzing stopped.

  “What are we going to do?” she asked.

  He didn’t answer.

  “If we opened the door, wouldn’t he—?” She heard the sound he made and didn’t finish. “Why should he make such a mistake with you? Why?”

  His breath sucked in. “Damn it,” he muttered.

  “What?”

  He was already moving for the front door—and her mind was seared by the sudden thought—it isn’t locked.

  She watched Don stoop and take off his shoes. He moved quietly into the front hall. She closed her eyes and listened tensely. Didn’t the man hear that slight clicking as Don turned the lock? Her throat moved convulsively. How did Don know it wasn’t a detective? Would a man intent on murder ring the doorbell of the man he intended to—

  Then she saw a dark figure standing at the front windows trying to look in, and froze where she stood.

  Don came back from the hall. “I think he—” he began to say. “Shhh!”

  He stiffened and, as if he knew, turned his head quickly toward the living room window. It was so still that Betty heard his dry swallow distinctively.

  Then the shadow moved away from the window and Betty realized that she’d been holding her breath. She let it escape, her chest shuddering as she exhaled.

  “I’d better get my gun,” Don said in a husky voice.

  She started then. “Your—?”

  “I hope it works. I haven’t cleaned it in a long time.”

  Don pushed by her. She heard him bounding up the stairs. She stood paralyzed.

  Upstairs, she heard Billy crying.

  She backed out of the kitchen and felt her way to the stairs, her eyes always on the kitchen, in her ears the sound of the man trying to get in the house to kill Don.

  At the top of the stairs, Don came around the wall edge and almost collided with her.

  “What are you doing?” he snapped.

  “I heard Billy crying.”

  She heard something snap in the darkness and realized that he’d set the hammer of his army automatic.

  “Didn’t you tell the police that he said he was going to kill you?”

  “I told them.”

  “Well, where are they, then?”

  Her words choked off. The man was breaking through a back window.

  She stood mute, listening to the fragments of window spatter on the kitchen linoleum.

  “What are we going to do?” Her whisper shook in the darkness.

  He pulled away from her grip and moved down the stairs without a sound. She heard his shoeless feet pad cross the dining room rug. In the kitchen the man was clambering through the window. She gripped the banister until her hand hurt.

  There was a rush of sight and sounds.

  The kitchen light flickered on. Don leaped from the wall and pointed the gun at something in the kitchen. “Drop it!” he ordered. The house was filled with the roar of a gun and something crashed in the front room.

  Then Betty sank down on the steps in a nerveless crouch as Don’s pistol only clicked and she saw it drop from his hand. Between the banister posts she saw him standing in the light that flooded from the kitchen.

  The man in the kitchen laughed.

  “Got you,” he said, “I got you now.”

  “No!” She didn’t even realize that she’d cried out. All she knew was that Don was staring up at her, his white face helpless in the kitchen light. The man looked up at her.

  “Turn on the light,” the man told Don. His throat seemed clogged; all the words came out thick and indistinct.

  The dining room light went on. Betty stared at a man with lank, black hair, white face, an unkempt tweed suit with an egg-spotted vest buttoned to the top. The dark revolver he held in a claw of hand.

  “Come down here,” he told her.

  She went down the steps. The man backed into the kitchen, kicking aside Don’s gun.

  “Get in here, both of you,” he ordered.

  In the fluorescent light, the man’s pocked face looked even whiter and grimier. His lips kept drawing back from his teeth as he sniffed. He kept clearing his throat.

  “Well, I got you,” he repeated.

  “You don’t understand,” Betty was able to speak at last, “You’ve made a mistake. Our name is Martin, not Tyler.”

  The man paid no attention to her. He looked straight at Don.

  “Thought you could change your name, I wouldn’t find you, huh?” he said. His eyes glittered. He coughed once, his chest lurching, spots of red rising in his puffed-out cheeks.

  “You’ve got the wrong man,” Don said quietly, “My name is Martin.”

  “That’s not what it was in the old days, is it?” the man said hoarsely.

  Betty glanced at Don, saw his face go slack. Something cold gripped her insides.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Don said.

  “Oh, don’t you!” snarled the man, “It was okay so long as the riding was high, wasn’t it, Donsy boy. Soon as things got hot you cut out quick enough, didn’t you? Didn’t you, you son-of-a-”

  She didn’t dare speak. Her eyes fled from the man’s face to Don’s and back again, her mind jumping in ten different directions at once. Why didn’t Don say something?

  “You know what they did t’us?” the man went on in a flat voice, “You know what they did? Sent us up for ten years. Ten years; count ‘em.” His smile was crooked. “But not you, Donsy boy. Not you.”

  “Don.” Betty said. He didn’t look at her.

  “And you got married,” said the man, the gun shaking in his hand, “You got married. Ain’t that—”

  A cough shook his body. For a second, his eyes filled with tears and he stepped back quickly and banged against the table. Then, in an instant, he stood, legs wide apart, holding the gun out before him, rubbing the tears from his pale cheeks.

  “Get back,” he warned. They hadn’t moved. His eyes widened, then his face grew suddenly taut. “Well, I’m gonna kill you,” he said. “I’m gonna kill you.”

  “Mister, you got—” Don began.

  “Shut up!” screamed the man.

  Then he was quiet, his dark eyes peering toward the dining room, the stairs. He was listening to Billy crying again.

  “You got a kid,” the man said slowly.

  “No.” Betty said it suddenly. She stared at the impossible face of the impossible man who had just said he was going to kill her husband, who was asking with unholy interest about her son.

  “This is gonna be a pleasure,” said the man, “I’m gonna pay you back good for what you done t’me.”

  She saw Don’s face whiten, heard his voice, frail and unbelieving. “What do you mean?”

  “Get in the dining room,” the man said.

  They backed into the next room, their eyes never leaving the man’s pock-marked face. Betty’s heart thudded. She shivered without control at the sound of Billy’s crying.

  “You’re not—”

  “Get up the stairs.” A violent cough shook the man.

  Betty shuddered as Don’s hand gripped her left arm. She glanced over at him dazedly but he didn’t return her look. He was holding her back from the stairs.

  “You’re not going to hurt my boy,” he said, his voice husk
y.

  The man prodded with his gun and Don backed up a step. Betty moved beside him. They went up another step and with each upward movement, Betty felt waves of horror grow stronger in her.

  “Simpson, kill me,” Don begged suddenly, “Leave my boy alone.”

  Don knew his name. Betty slumped against the wall weakly with the knowledge that everything the man had said was true. True.

  “I swear to you!” Don said.

  “Swear!” the man shouted at him, “Twelve years I been after you. Ten in stir and two years running you down!”

  Suddenly his face was convulsed with coughing; he shot out his left hand for the banister.

  In the same second, Don leaped.

  Betty felt a scream tear from her throat as the roar of the gun deafened her. She heard Don cry out in pain and watched in rigid horror as the two men grappled on the stairway just below her. She saw blood running down Don’s shirt and splashing on the green-carpeted steps.

  Her eyes grew wide as she watched the man’s hate-tortured face grow hard, the flesh seeming to tighten as if drawn at the edges by screws. The two men made no sound, only gasped in each other’s faces. Their hands, wrestling for the gun, were hidden from her.

  Another deafening roar.

  The two men stood straight, staring at each other. Then the man’s mouth opened and spittle ran across his unshaven chin. He toppled backwards down the steps and landed in a crumpled heap on the landing. His dead eyes stared up at them.

  For a long while, Betty stood quite still.

  Then she left the room and went back into the hall, closing the door quietly behind her. She went to the bathroom and got the medical kit.

  Don was sitting on a step hallway downstairs, his head propped on two blood-drained fists, his elbows resting on his knees. He didn’t turn as she came down the steps.

  She sat down beside him and drew a bandage tight around his shoulder and arm.

  “Does it hurt?” she asked dully.

  He shook his head.

  “I wonder if the neighbors heard,” she said.

  “They must have,” he said, “You’d better call the police.”

  Her fingers grew still on the bandage. “You didn’t call them before, did you?”

  “No.”

  He began to speak slowly, without looking at her.

  “When I was just a kid,” he said, “Eighteen, nineteen—I worked the rackets in Chicago.” He looked down at the dead man. “Simpson was one of the guys I worked with. He was always hot-headed, maybe a little crazy.”

  His head fell forward. “Well, when the police caught up with us I…” He let out a slow, tired breath. “I got scared and ran. I didn’t think then either. I was just a kid and I was scared. So I ran.”

  She looked at him thinking how strange it was to have been married nine years to a man she didn’t know about.

  “The rest is simple,” he said, “I changed my name, I tried to live a decent life, an honest one. I tried to forget.” He shook his head defeatedly. “I don’t know how he found me.” He swallowed. “It doesn’t matter, really. You’d better call the police. Before somebody else does.”

  She finished the bandage and stood. She went down the steps, avoiding the sight of the man lying there with his blood-soaked chest.

  She dialed the operator. “Police,” she said and waited, looking up at Don’s pale face looking at her between the posts of the banister. He looked like a frightened boy who’d been chased and punished and knew that he deserved it.

  “Thirteenth precinct,” said the man’s voice on the phone.

  “I’d like to report a shooting,” Betty said.

  The man took the address. Betty’s eyes were on Don, on the look of resignation on his face.

  “The man broke into our house,” she said.

  “No,” Don said, “Tell them the truth.”

  “That’s right,” she said, “We never saw him before. I guess he was a burglar. Most of our lights were out. We were watching television. I guess he thought we weren’t home.”

  Don sagged and closed his eyes as she told the police to bring a doctor. Then, after she hung up she stood looking down at him.

  “All right,” he murmured.

  The blood started oozing through his bandage then and Betty went and got a clean towel from the linen closet. She went back and sat beside her husband and held the towel against his shoulder until the flow stopped. Then she got up, went to Billy’s bedroom and rocked him gently in her arms.

  Downstairs, Don waited quietly for the men to come and take away the body.

  Leo Rising

  “Grace?”

  She stopped and looked across her shoulder. Miles was standing in the doorway of his study.

  “Yes?” she asked.

  “I have to speak to you,” he told her.

  No, she thought. She almost groaned aloud. Not another crisis.

  “Please,” he said. His tone was grim.

  “The car’s already waiting,” she objected.

  Miles shuddered. “This is absolutely vital.”

  Grace sighed and shut the front door. Give me strength, she thought as she crossed the entry hall. Miles stepped aside, admitting her to his study. “I have an awful lot of shopping to do,” she said.

  “This won’t take long.”

  She cast her eyes upward.

  Famous last words, she thought; he used them every time—and it always took long.

  His astrological chart was on the desk.

  “This is it,” said Miles.

  She held herself in check. “What’s wrong?” she asked. This time? she kept herself from adding.

  “An ultimate array of squares, semisquares, and adverse conjunctions,” Miles answered in a quavering voice.

  Don’t sigh wearily, she told herself firmly. “What does it mean?” she asked, adopting a solicitous tone.

  “Financial ruin.”

  She blinked. Did he say ruin? “Ruin?”

  “Ruin.”

  Grace’s mouth opened and closed without a sound. This was serious. With his fanatical devotion to astrology he might very well create that ruin just to prove his point. She stared at him in shock. All the aggravations of the past seemed trivial compared to this.

  “See here,” he said. He drew her to the desk and pointed at his chart with stabbing motions. “Square to Mars. Square to Saturn. Adverse conjunction. Semisquare to Mercury. Good God, it’s a positive blueprint for bankruptcy!”

  No, she thought. She could not repress a groan this time. And there was nothing she could do; that was the nightmare. In every other detail of their marriage Miles deferred to her completely. But where astrology was concerned—

  “What are you going to do?” she murmured.

  “It’s already done,” he answered. His voice made her shiver.

  Incredible, she thought ten minutes later as she rode into the city. All these years of being convinced that astrology was nonsense. Now this. It certainly gave one a sense of cosmic awe.

  “Where to?” the chauffeur asked.

  Grace blinked and looked at him. “The bank,” she said. She had to smile. Your chart is free of such afflictions, don’t you see, Miles had told her dramatically; therefore, to protect myself from this impending ruin I must transfer everything to you.

  “And then?” the chauffeur broke into her train of thought.

  The sight of his shoulders and curly black hair made her tingle with anticipation.

  “And then the airport,” she replied, “Leo, darling.”

  Where There’s a Will

  BY RICHARD MATHESON AND RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON

  It is not unusual for a son to follow in the writing footsteps of his father, but it’s uncommon for the two to collaborate. Here is a rare and fortunate exception. Richard Matheson is a successful Hollywood screenwriter, author of many classic throat-gripping short stories and novels of terror— “Duel,” “Prey,” A Stir of Echoes, The Shrinking Man, I Am Legend—
as well as one of the key writers to work with the late Rod Serling on the famous Twilight Zone television series. His son, Richard Christian Matheson, still in his mid-twenties, has already sold a number of short stories to magazines and anthologies and has begun a career in television scripting. He shows promise of making a strong mark of his own. Their combined talents concentrate here on the claustrophobic aspects of terror.

  He awoke.

  It was dark and cold. Silent.

  I’m thirsty, he thought. He yawned and sat up; fell back with a cry of pain. He’d hit his head on something. He rubbed at the pulsing tissue of his brow, feeling the ache spread back to his hairline.

  Slowly, he began to sit up again but hit his head once more. He was jammed between the mattress and something overhead. He raised his hands to feel it. It was soft and pliable, its texture yielding beneath the push of his fingers. He felt along its surface. It extended as far as he could reach. He swallowed anxiously and shivered.

  What in God’s name was it?

  He began to roll to his left and stopped with a gasp. The surface was blocking him there, as well. He reached to his right and his heart beat faster. It was on the other side, as well. He was surrounded on four sides. His heart compressed like a smashed soft-drink can, the blood spurting a hundred times faster.

  Within seconds, he sensed that he was dressed. He felt trousers, a coat, a shirt and tie, a belt. There were shoes on his feet.

  He slid his right hand to his trouser pocket and reached in. He palmed a cold, metal square and pulled his hand from the pocket, bringing it to his face. Fingers trembling, he hinged the top open and spun the wheel with his thumb. A few sparks glinted but no flame. Another turn and it lit.

  He looked down at the orange cast of his body and shivered again. In the light of the flame, he could see all around himself.

  He wanted to scream at what he saw.

  He was in a casket.

  He dropped the lighter and the flame striped the air with a yellow tracer before going out. He was in total darkness, once more. He could see nothing. All he heard was his terrified breathing as it lurched forward, jumping from his throat.

  How long had he been here? Minutes? Hours?

  Days?

  His hopes lunged at the possibility of a nightmare; that he was only dreaming, his sleeping mind caught in some kind of twisted vision. But he knew it wasn’t so. He knew, horribly enough, exactly what had happened.