Up in the trembling loft, the organ played alone, its stops all out, its volume pedals down, its motor spinning, its bellows shuddering, its pipe mouths bellowing and shrieking.
Suddenly, a wall cracked open. Arch frames twisted, grinding stone on stone. A jagged block of plaster crumbled off the dome, falling to the pews in a cloud of white dust. The floors vibrated.
Now the congregation flooded from the doors like water. Behind their screaming, shoving ranks, a window frame broke loose and somersaulted to the floor. Another crack ran crazily down a wall. The air swam thick with plaster dust.
Bricks began to fall.
Out on the sidewalk, Mr. Moffat stood motionless staring at the church with empty eyes.
He was the one. How could he have failed to know it? His fear, his dread, his hatred. His fear of being also scrapped, replaced; his dread of being shut out from the things he loved and needed; his hatred of a world that had no use for aged things.
It had been he who turned the overcharged organ into a maniac machine.
Now, the last of the congregation was out. Inside the first wall collapsed.
It fell in a clamorous rain of brick and wood and plaster. Beams tottered like trees, then fell quickly, smashing down the pews like sledges. The chandeliers tore loose, adding their explosive crash to the din.
Then, up in the loft, the bass notes began.
The notes were so low they had no audible pitch. They were vibrations in the air. Mechanically, the pedals fell, piling up a mountainous chord. It was the roar of some titanic animal, the thundering of a hundred, storm-tossed oceans, the earth sprung open to swallow every life. Floors buckled, walls caved in with crumbling roars. The dome hung for an instant, then rushed down and mangled half the nave. A monstrous cloud of plaster and mortar dust enveloped everything. Within its swimming opacity, the church, with a crackling, splintering, crashing, thundering explosion, went down.
Later, the old man stumbled dazedly across the sunlit ruins and heard the organ breathing like some unseen beast dying in an ancient forest.
The stories in this volume were first published in magazines and books as follows:
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine: “A Visit to Santa Claus” (as “I’ll Make It Look Good” under the name Logan Swanson)
Amazing Stories: “The Last Day”
Beyond Fantasy Fiction: “Long Distance Call” (as “Sorry, Right Number”)
Bluebook: “The Conqueror”
Ed Bain’s Mystery Book: “Day of Reckoning” (as “The Faces”)
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine: “Big Surprise” (as “What Was in the Box?”)
Fantastic Story Magazine: “Death Ship”
Fifteen Detective Stories: “Dying Room Only”
Galaxy Science Fiction: “Shipshape Home,” “Third from the Sun,” “One for the Books”
Gamma: “Deus Ex Machina,” “Shock Wave” (as “Crescendo”)
Imagination: “Blood Son” (as “Drink My Red Blood . . .”)
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction: “Born of Man and Woman,” “Dress of White Silk,” “The Funeral,” “Holiday Man”
Mystery Tales: “Now Die In It”
Playboy: “Prey,” “Button, Button,” “Duel,” “No Such Thing as a Vampire”
Startling Stories: “Witch War”
Alone By Night, edited by Michael Congdon and Don Congdon (Ballantine Books, 1962): “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”
Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley (The Viking Press, 1980): “Where There’s a Will,” written with Richard Christian Matheson
The Fiend in You, edited by Charles Beaumont (Ballantine Books, 1962): “Fingerprints,” “Mute”
Masques V, edited by J. N. Williamson and Gary Braunbeck (Gauntlet Press, 2006): “Haircut”
Matheson Uncollected: Volume One (Gauntlet Press, 2008): “Counterfeit Bills,” “Man with a Club,” “The Prisoner”
Star Science Fiction Stories, no. 3, edited by Frederik Pohl (Ballantine Books, 1954): “Dance of the Dead”
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Richard Matheson, The Best of Richard Matheson
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