THEY WALKED LIKE MEN
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
A MANOR BOOK…..1975
Manor Books Inc.
432 Park Avenue South
New York, New York 10016
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 62-17362
Copyright,©, 1962, by Clifford D. Simak. ‘ All rights reserved.
Published by arrangement with Doubleday & Company, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.
Scanned using FineReader 6.0 Professional
DimJim
I
It was Thursday night and I’d had too much to drink and the hall was dark and that was the only thing that saved me. If I hadn’t stopped beneath the hall light just outside my door to sort out the keys, I would have stepped into the trap, just as sure as hell.
Its being Thursday night had nothing to do with it, actually, but that’s the way I write. I’m a newspaperman, and newspapermen put the day of the week and the time of day and all the other pertinent information into everything they write.
The hall was dark because Old George Weber was a penny-pinching soul. He spent half his time fighting with the other tenants about cutting down the heat or not installing air conditioning or the plumbing’s being on the fritz again or why he never got around to redecorating. He never fought with me because I didn’t care. It was a place to sleep and eat occasionally and to spend what spare time I had, and I wasn’t fussy. We thought an awful lot of one another, did Old George and I. We played pinochle together and we drank beer together and every fall we went out to South Dakota for the pheasant hunting. But we wouldn’t be going this year, I remembered, because that very morning I had driven Old George and Mrs. George out to the airport and had seen them off on a trip to California. And even if Old George had stayed at home, we wouldn’t have been going, for next week I’d be off on the trip the Old Man had been after me to make for the last six months.
I was fumbling for the keys and I was none too steady-handed, for Gavin Walker, the city editor, and I had got into an argument about should science writers be required to cover stuff like council meetings and P.T.A.‘s and such. Gavin said that they should and I said that they shouldn’t, and first he’d buy some drinks and then I would buy some drinks, until it came closing time and Ed, the bartender, had to throw us out. I’d wondered, when I left the place, if I should risk driving home or maybe call a cab. I had decided finally that probably I could drive, but I took the back streets, where it was unlikely there’d be any cops. I’d got home all right and had got the car maneuvered into the lot back of the apartment building, but I hadn’t tried to park it. I’d just left it sitting out in the center of the lot. I was having a hard time getting the right key. They all seemed to look alike, and while I was fumbling them around they slipped out of my fingers and fell onto the carpeting.
I bent down to pick them up and I missed them on the first swipe and I missed them on the second, so I got down on my knees to make a new approach to them. And it was then I saw it.
Consider this: If Old George had not been a tight man with the buck, he’d put in bigger lights out there in the hall, so that one could walk right up to his door and pick out his key instead of going over to the center of the hall and fumbling around underneath that misplaced lightning bug that functioned as a light bulb. And if I hadn’t gotten into the argument with Gavin and taken on a load, I’d never have dropped the keys to start with. And even if I had, I probably could have picked them up without getting on my knees. And if I hadn’t gotten on my knees, I never would have seen that the carpeting was cut.
Not torn, you understand. Not worn out. But cut. And cut in a funny way—cut in a semicircle in front of my door. As if someone had used the center of my door as a focal point and, with a knife tied to a three-foot string, had cut a semicircle from the rug. Had cut it and left it there—for the rug had not been taken. Someone had cut a semicircular chunk out of it and then had left it there.
And that, I told myself, was a damn funny thing to do—a senseless sort of thing. For why should anyone want a piece of carpeting cut in that particular shape? And if, for some unfathomable reason, someone had wanted it, why had he cut it out, then left it lying there?
I put out a cautious finger to be sure that I was right— that I wasn’t seeing things. And I was right, except it wasn’t carpet. The stuff that lay inside that three-foot semicircle looked for all the world like the other carpeting, but it wasn’t carpeting. It was some sort of paper—the thinnest sort of paper—that looked exactly like the carpeting.
I pulled back my hand and stayed there on my knees, and I wasn’t thinking so much of the cutout carpeting and the paper that was there as I was thinking how I’d explain being on my knees if someone in one of those other apartments should come out in the hall.
But no one came out. The hall stayed empty and it had that musty smell one associates with apartment halls. Above me I heard the tiny singing of the tiny light bulb and I knew by the singing that it was on the verge of burning out. And the new caretaker maybe would replace it with a bigger light bulb. Although, I told myself on second thought, that was most unlikely, for Old George probably had briefed him in minute detail on economic maintenance.
I put out my hand once more and touched the paper with a fingertip, and it was paper—just as I had thought it was— or, at least, it felt very much like paper.
And the idea of that cutout carpeting and the paper in its place made me sore as hell. It was a dirty trick and it was a dirty fraud and I grabbed the paper and jerked it out of there. Underneath the paper was the trap.
I staggered to my feet, with the paper still hanging from my fingers, and stared at the trap.
I didn’t believe it. No man in his right mind would have. People just simply don’t go around setting traps for other people—as if those other people might be a bear or fox.
But the trap stayed there, lying on the floor exposed by the cutout carpeting and until this moment covered by the paper, just as a human trapper would cover his trap with a light sprinkling of leaves or grass to conceal it from his quarry.
It was a big steel trap. I had never seen a bear trap, but I imagine it was as big or bigger than a bear trap. It was a human trap, I told myself, for it had been set for humans. For one human in particular. For there was no doubt it had been set for me.
I backed away from it until I bumped into the wall. I stayed there against the wall, looking at the trap, and on the carpeting between myself and the trap lay the bunch of keys I’d dropped.
It was a gag, I told myself. But I was wrong, of course. It wasn’t any gag. If I’d stepped over to the door instead of stopping underneath the light, it would have been no gag. I’d have a mangled leg—or perhaps both legs mangled and perhaps some broken bones—for the jaws were equipped with jagged, offset teeth. And no one in God’s world could have forced the jaws apart once they’d snapped upon their victim. To free a man from a trap like that would call for wrenches to take the trap apart.
I shivered, thinking of it. A man could bleed to death before anyone could get that trap apart.
I stood there, looking at the trap, with my hand crumpling up the paper as I looked. And then I raised an arm and hurled the wad of paper at the trap. It hit one jaw and rolled
off and barely missed the pan and lay there between the jaws.
I’d have to get a stick or something, I told myself, and spring the trap before I could get into my place. I could call the cops, of course, but there’d be no sense in that. They’d create a terrible uproar and more than likely take me down to headquarters to ask me a lot of questions, and I didn’t have the time. I was all. tuckered out and all I wanted was to crawl into my bed.
More than that, a ruckus of that sor
t would give the apartment a bad name, and that would be a dirty trick to play on Old George when he was out in California. And it would give all my neighbors something to talk about and they’d want to talk to me about it and I didn’t want that. They left me alone and that was the way I wanted it. I was happy just the way it was.
I wondered where I could find a stick, and the only place I could think of was the closet down on the first floor where the brooms and mops and the vacuum cleaner and the other junk were kept. I tried to remember if the closet might be locked, and I didn’t think it was, but I couldn’t be positively sure.
I stepped out from the wall and started for the stairs. I had just reached the top of them when something made me turn around. I don’t think I heard anything. I’m fairly sure I didn’t. But the effect was the same as if I had.
There was something said for me to turn around, and I turned around so fast my feet got tangled up and threw me to the floor.
And even as I fell I saw the trap was wilting.
I tried to ease my fall by putting out my hands, but I didn’t do so well. I hit with quite a thud and banged my head, and my brain was full of stars.
I got my hands under me and hoisted up my front and shook the stars away and the trap had gone on wilting.
The jaws were limp and the whole contraption was humped up in a most peculiar way. I watched it in some wonder, not doing anything, just lying there, with the front of me propped up on my arms.
The trap got limper and limper and began to hump together. It was as if a piece of mashed-out, mangled plastic putty was trying to put itself into shape again. And it did put itself into shape. It made itself into a ball. All this time that it has been humping itself together, it had been changing color, and when it finally was a ball it was as black as pitch.
It lay there for a moment in front of the door and then it began rolling slowly, as if it took a lot of effort to get itself to rolling.
And it rolled straight for me!
I tried to get out of its way, but it built its speed up fast and I thought for an instant it would crash straight into me. It was about the size of a bowling ball, maybe just a little bigger, and I had no way of knowing how heavy it might be.
But it didn’t hit me. It brushed me, that was all.
I twisted to watch it go down the stairs, and that was a funny thing. It bounced down the steps, but not the way a normal ball would bounce. It bounced short and fast, not high and lazy—as if there were a law which said it must hit every tread but make the best speed that it could. It went down the flight, hitting every tread, and it went around the corner post so fast you could almost see the smoke.
I scrambled to my feet and got to the banister and leaned over to see the flight below. But the ball was out of sight. There was no sign of it.
I went back down the hall and there, underneath the light, lay the bunch of keys, and there was the three-foot semicircle cut out of the carpet.
I got down on my knees and picked up the keys and found the right one finally and got over to the door. I unlocked it and went into the apartment and locked the door, real fast, behind me before I even took the time to turn on a light
I got the light turned on and made it to the kitchen. I sat down at the breakfast table and remembered there was a pitcher almost half full of tomato juice in the refrigerator and that I should drink some of it. But I couldn’t stand the thought of it. I gagged just thinking of it. What I really needed was another slug of booze, but I’d had too much of that already.
I sat there, thinking about the trap and why anyone would set a trap for me. It was the craziest thing I had ever heard of. If I hadn’t seen that trap myself, I’d never have believed it.
It was no trap, of course—no regular trap, that is. For regular traps do not wilt and roll into a ball and go rolling away when they’ve failed to catch their quarry.
I tried to reason it all out, but my brain was fuzzy and I was sleepy and I was safe at home and tomorrow was another day. So I gave up everything and staggered off to bed.
II
Something jerked me out of sleep.
I came up straight, not knowing where I was, not knowing who I was—entirely disoriented, not fuzzy, not sleepy, not confused, but with that terrible, cold clarity of mind that makes an emptiness of everything in its sudden flash of being. I was in a silence, in an emptiness, in a lightless nowhere, and that clear, cold mind speared out like a striking snake, seeking, finding nothing, and horrified at the nothingness.
Then the clamor came—the high, shrill, insistent, insane clamor, which was entirely mindless in that it was not meant for me or for anything but clamored solely for itself.
The silence fell again and there were shadows that were shapes—a square of half-light that turned out to be a window, a faint gleam from the kitchen where the light still burned, a crouched, dark monstrosity that was an easy chair.
The phone screamed again through the morning darkness and I tumbled out of bed, heading blindly for a door that I could not see. Groping, I found it, and the phcne was silent now.
I went across the living room, stumbling in the darkness, and was putting out my hand when it bagan to ring again.
I jerked it from the cradle viciously and mumbled into it. There was something the matter with my tongue. It didn’t want to work.
“Parker?”
“Who else?”
“This is Joe—Joe Newman.”
“Joe?” Then I remembered. Joe Newman was the dogwatch man on the night desk at the paper.
“Hate to get you up,” said Joe.
I mumbled at him wrathfully.
“Something funny happened. Thought you ought to know.”
“Look, Joe,” I said. “Call Gavin. He’s the city editor. He gets paid for being gotten out of bed.”
“But this is down your alley, Parker. This is—”
“Yeah, I know,” I told him. “A flying saucer landed.”
“Not that. You ever hear of Timber Lane?”
“Out by the lake,” I said. “Way out west of town.”
“That’s it. The old Belmont place is at the end of it. House closed up. Ever since the Belmont family moved out to Arizona. Kids use the road as a lovers’ lane.”
“Now, look, Joe…”
“I was getting to it, Parker. Some kids were parked out there tonight. They saw a bunch of balls rolling down the road. Like bowling balls, one behind the other.”
I’m afraid I yelled at him: “They what?”
“They saw these things in the headlights when they were driving out and got panicky. Put a call in to the cops.”
I got myself in hand and made my voice calm. “Cops find anything?”
“Just tracks,” said Joe.
“Bowling ball tracks?”
“Yeah, I guess you could call them that.”
I told him: “Kids been drinking, maybe.”
“Cops didn’t say so. They talked with these kids. They just saw the balls rolling down the road. They didn’t stop to investigate. They just got out of there.”
I didn’t say anything. I was trying to figure out what I ought to say. And I was scared. Scared stiff.
“What do you think of it, Parker?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Imagination maybe. Or ribbing the cops.”
“The cops found tracks,”
“Kids could have made them. Could have rolled some bowling balls up and down the road, picking out the dusty places. Figured they’d get their names into the papers. They get bored and crazy …”
“You wouldn’t use it, then?”
“Look, Joe—I’m not the city editor. It’s not up to me. Ask Gavin. He’s the man who decides what we publish.”
“And you don’t think there’s anything to it? Maybe it’s a hoax?”
“How the hell would I know?” I yelled at him.
He got sore at me. I don’t blame him much.
‘Thanks, Parker. Sorry that I troubled you,” he said, and
then hung up, and the phone began its steady drone.
“Good night, Joe,” I said into the drone. “I’m sorry that I yelled.”
It helped, saying it, even if he wasn’t there to hear.
And I wondered why I’d tried to downgrade the story, why I’d tried to suggest it was no more than some teen-age prank.
Because, you slob, you’re scared, said that inner man who sometimes talks to you. Because you’d give almost anything to make yourself believe there is nothing to it. Because you don’t want to be reminded of that trap out in the hall.
I put the receiver back into the cradle, and my hand was shaking, so that it made a clatter when I put it down.
I stood in the darkness and felt the terror closing in. And when I tried to put a finger on the terror, there was nothing there. For it wasn’t terrible; it was comic—a trap set outside a door, a pack of bowling balls trundling sedately down a country lane. It was the stuff cartoons are made of. It was something that was too ridiculous to believe. It was something that would send you off into helpless guffaws even as it killed you.
If it meant to kill.
And that was the question, certainly. Was it meant to kill?
Had that trap outside the door actually been a trap, made of honest steel or its equivalent? Or had it been a toy, made of harmless plastic or its equivalent?
And the hardest question of them all—had it actually been there? I knew it had, of course. For I had seen it there. But my mind kept trying to reject it. For my comfort and my sanity, my mind pushed it away and the logic in me screamed against the very thought of it.
I had been drunk, of course, but not as drunk as that. Not falling-down drunk, not seeing-things drunk—just a little shaky in the hands and weakish in the knees.
Now I was all right—except for that terrible, lonely coldness of the mind. Type three hangover—and, in many ways, the worst of all of them.
By now my eyes had become somewhat dark-adapted and I could make out the formless shape of furniture. I made my way to the kitchen without stumbling over anything. The door was open a crack and a shaft of light streamed through.