Harry crept up beside him, reluctantly touched the window. It was most certainly not glass, and it was not transparent either. It was cold and hard like the scale of a fish.
"It's just an illusion, like the doorknob," Harry said.
"Only a more complicated type of illusion, something it does with its mind probably. There's no furniture, no stairs, no nothing inside there but some kind of guts, I guess, the juice of our houses."
The house shivered, sent vibrations up Harry's palm. Harry remembered those long arms that had come out of the side windows earlier. He envisioned one popping out now, plucking him up.
The house burped, loudly.
Suddenly Lem was wearing Harry for a hat.
"Get down off me," Lem said, "or you're going to wake up with a tube up your nose."
Harry climbed down. "It's too much for us, Lem. In the movies they'd bring in the army, use nukes."
Lem took the can of lighter fluid out of his coat pocket. It was the large economy size.
"Ssssshhhh," Lem said. He brought out his pocket knife and a book of matches.
"You're going to blow us up!"
Lem tore the lining out of one of his coat pockets, squirted lighter fluid on it, poked one end of the lining into the fluid can with the point of his knife. He put the rag-stuffed can on the ground, the matches beside it. Then he took his knife, stuck it quickly into the house's side, ripped down.
Something black and odorous oozed out. The house trembled. "That's like a mosquito bite to this thing," Lem said. "Give me that can and matches."
"I don't like this," Harry said, but he handed the can and matches to Lem. Lem stuck the can halfway into the wound, let the rag dangle.
"Now run like hell," Lem said, and struck a match.
Harry started running toward the street as fast as his arthritic legs would carry him.
Lem lit the pocket lining. The fluid-soaked cloth jumped to bright life.
Lem turned to run. He hadn't gone three steps when the can blew. The heat slapped his back and the explosion thundered inside his head. He reached the street, looked back.
The house opened its front door and howled like a sixty-milean-hour tornado. The upstairs front window shades went up, eyes glinted savagely in the moonlight. A spear of flame spurted out of the house's side.
Harry was crossing the street, running for his house when he looked back. The creature howled again. Arms came out of its sides. All around windows went up and wings sprouted out of them.
"Jesus," Harry said, and he turned away from his house so as not to lead it to Edith. He started up the street toward his car.
Lem came up behind him laughing. "Ha! Ha! Flame on!" Harry glanced back.
The explosion had ignited internal gases and the thing was howling flames now. Its tongue flapped out and slapped the street. Its wings fluttered and it rose up into the sky.
Doors opened all down the block. Windows went up.
Edith's head poked out of one of the windows. "Harry?"
"Be back, be back, be back," Harry said, and ran on.
Behind him Lem said, "Pacemaker, don't fail me now."
They reached the car wheezing.
"There . . . she . . . goes," Lem panted. "After it!" A bright, orange-red mass darted shrieking across the night sky, moved toward the ship channel, losing altitude.
The Ford coughed to life, hit the street. They went left, driving fast. Lem hung out of the window, pointing up, saying, "There it goes! Turn left. No, now over there. Turn right!"
"The ship channel!" Harry yelled. "It's almost to the ship channel."
"Falling, falling," Lem said.
It was.
They drove up the ship channel bridge. The house-thing blazed above them, moaned loud enough to shake the windows in the Ford. The sky was full of smoke.
Harry pulled over to the bridge railing, parked, jumped out with Lem. Other cars had pulled over. Women, men, and children burst out of them, ran to the railing, looked and pointed up.
The great flaming beast howled once more, loudly, then fell, hit the water with a thunderous splash.
"Ah, ha!" Harry yelled. "Dammit, Lem, we've done it, the block is free. Tomorrow we break out the paint, buy new windows, get some shingles . . ."
The last of the thing slipped under the waves with a hiss. A black cloud hung over the water for a moment, thinned to gray. There was a brief glow beneath the expanding ripples, then darkness.
Lem lifted his flask in toast. "Ha! Ha! Flame out!"
Author's Note on The Man Who Dreamed
This was written for Twilight Zone, but, alas, it wasn't picked up. I sent it to The Horror Show, and they grabbed it. It's an obvious Ray Bradbury influenced story. It's light, but I like it.
The Man Who Dreamed
The old man drove a red pickup that looked ready to fall apart. He went up one street of Mud Creek and down another, driving slowly, looking out the window, sweating inside the pickup, cooking in the summer sunshine like a turkey in the oven.
Finally he found what he was looking for: a small, white frame house with a freshly mown lawn that you could smell from three blocks away. There was a low, decorative white fence that encased the yard and the old man parked in front of the curb next to that, got out on his rickety legs, went through the gate and up the walk.
A tricycle lay overturned near the front steps. The old man picked it up and set it right. He went up the steps and knocked on the door.
A young woman with her blonde hair tied back in a ponytail answered his knock. She had a white apron tied over her jeans and sweatshirt. She was barefoot. And very pretty. She smelled faintly of fried chicken.
"Yes?" she asked the old man.
The old man wore a sweaty cowboy hat and he took that off with a wave of his hand and held it in front of his stomach in a manner reminiscent of one clutching a wound. His face certainly seemed to show some sort of hurt—something deep and sour and unrelenting.
"Ma'am, my name is Homer Wall and I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma—"
"Tulsa? I've got relatives there, the Mayners. This hasn't got anything to do with them, does it? They're okay?"
"I guess so. I don't know them. I'm not here about your relatives."
Her eyes housed some suspicion now. "Then you're selling something?"
"No ma'am, I'm not. I've come to tell you something very important. You see, Mrs. James—"
"How'd you know my name?"
"I'll explain that. I've got this gift, you see, and—"
"For me?"
"No ma'am. I mean, yes ma'am, in a way. But not the sort of gift you're thinking of . . . let me explain."
"Mr. Wall, I don't give to religious organizations, and I really have some work to do."
He shook his head. "No ma'am, I'm not a religious organization."
"Well now," she said, smiling, "I didn't think you were the whole thing."
The old man produced a pocket watch from his pants pocket and looked at the time. He felt the mainspring of his heart wind a little tighter. "We haven't got much time, Mrs. James. If you'll just give me a moment."
"Much time? What on Earth are—"
"Please. It takes some explaining to make it so you'll understand it right. My gift is special. I got struck by lightning three years ago. Just one of those things. I was working in my garden. Didn't hurt me at all. But it cured my bad hearing, made my hair grow back—"
"You are selling something! My husband has a full head of hair—"
"No ma'am, I'm not selling anything. Please listen. The lightning, it caused me to start having dreams. Dreams that come true. Like I dreamed my wife was going to die three weeks before she did. Happened just like I dreamed it. Her heart quit. You see, I dreamed my way right into her chest, saw her heart stop pumping, and three weeks later she died. Just like I'd seen it.
"After that it got worse. The dreams would come and grow more terrible each night; and then, finally it would stop, and three weeks after it stopped, it would h
appen."
"What would happen?"
"The dream would come true. I dreamed about this air crash, and each night the dream showed me more. I even dreamed the headlines that would be written long before they were put into print, before the words were even thought up. It was terrible, the bodies in the water, the horror . . . always bad dreams. Never good ones. I dreamed about this little baby and the well down at my granddad's old place. I'd played there when I was a kid. And I dreamed this baby fell in, and I knew that child, and I talked to the parents and they listened, and it didn't happen. You see, they were thinking about buying that land, and there wasn't any way I could have known.
"So I put it together, that this lightning hadn't been any accident, that I was special and I was supposed to go out and try and stop these things. And sometimes, when folks listened, I found that I could—"
"Now, Mr. Wall—"
"Listen, three weeks ago to this day my dreams about you, this house, your husband, and your little boys, they stopped—"
"How'd you know I have little boys? What are you—"
"For God's sake, listen. I'm telling you. I dreamed it. And I could see them and you, and your husband, burning—"
She tried to close the door on him, but he moved fast, put his foot in the doorway. She pressed but made no progress. He didn't remove his foot.
"—dreamed this signpost that said: Mud Creek, and I dreamed the newspaper headlines off your local paper. I just kept dreaming enough things that I put it together, figured out the town's location. And when I saw your house, I knew it was the one in the dream. The one that was burning."
"Mr. Wall, my husband'll be home any minute."
"Yes, I know. And at five-thirty, while you're eating dinner—I know the time because I dreamed the clock over your kitchen sink and it showed five-thirty—there's going to be—"
"There's my husband. You best go."
The old man did not turn around. He heard a car pull up to the curb. "Listen to me, please. There will be a storm." A car door slammed. "Lightning will strike this house and you'll all die, horribly." The gate creaked open. "I tried to get here earlier, to warn you in plenty of time, but the truck broke down and I had to take some odd jobs to buy the parts it needed, and by the time I got that done and found you, well, it was the day, nearly the time—" A hand clamped the old man's bony shoulder.
"Get your foot out of the door."
The old man turned to look the other in the face. He was a young, handsome man in a blue business suit. "Mr. James, you've got to listen."
"Oh Robert, he's telling some awful thing about how he dreamed we were all going to die in a fire, that lightning is going to strike the house at five-thirty, that he's here to warn us—"
"I am here to warn you," the old man said. "I dreamed this place. Your names will be in tomorrow's paper, they'll call it a freak accident."
"Tomorrow's paper!" Mr. James said. "You are some kind of kook. Take your witchcraft stuff somewhere else."
"Mr. James." The old man's hand clutched at the man's lapel like a claw.
"I mean it."
"You've got to—"
Robert snatched the old man's hand free, pushed him back. The old man stumbled over the tricycle and fell onto the grass. "Robert! He's just a crazy old man. You'll hurt him!"
"I didn't mean to do that," Robert said. "I didn't know I pushed that hard. I didn't mean for you to fall, but if you don't go, now, I'm going to call the police."
"Lightning will strike this house," the old man said, getting up, recovering his hat and placing it on his head. "And you'll all die. You've got to get out of this house."
"Get out of here," Robert said. "I mean it. Hon, call the police."
The old man sighed, nodded. "Very well, I tried."
"You tried something," Robert said.
The old man got in his truck. He looked longingly out the window at them for a moment, finally started the motor and drove away, heading north.
"Oh Robert, such a strange old man."
"A kook."
"Could . . . I mean—?"
"Of course not. That's hocus pocus nonsense. Besides, there's not a cloud in the sky. It's sunny and blue. He's just a nut, well meaning maybe, but still a nut."
"Poor man."
"Forget it. What's for dinner? Are the boys home?"
"Fried chicken and mashed potatoes. And yes, they're home and hungry and ready to see their daddy." He put his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek and they went inside.
The old man stopped just outside of Mud Creek and looked at his pocket watch. Five-twenty.
He shook his head sadly, a tear ran down his cheek. He put the truck in gear and drove on northward. Above him, blowing fast, a dark mass of clouds moved south.
Author's Note on Walks
I always wanted to be published in Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine. I gave it a lot of shots, but never made it. Finally, the magazine changed so much it didn't interest me. It became a sort of simplistic don't strain and don't hurt your feelings kind of fiction designed to kill time between subway stops.
But I still wanted to be published there. Now and again I would try and write a story I thought fit that mold, but I had changed so much, I just couldn't fit it.
Then one day I had this idea. It struck me as the perfect Alfred Hitchcock Magazine story. Entertaining enough, but forgettable. I know that sounds cold, but this sort of thing has its place too. This also applies to movies. Comics. Music. Etc.
Anyway, I wrote this and sent it off.
They didn't buy it either.
So much for trying to write to market. I've always found that for me this is a bad idea.
But, I do think it did what I intended. I do think it should have fit in Alfred Hitchcock or Ellery Queen.
Walks
My son worries me. He only leaves his room for long walks and he treats me like the hired help. I ought to throw him out, but I cannot. He is my son and I love him and I share his pain, though I am uncertain what that pain is.
Even as a little boy he was strange. Always strange. After his mama died he only got stranger. He was eighteen then, and of course it was a bad thing for him, but I thought he would have coped better at that age. It was not as if he were ten.
He certainly misses his mama.
He goes into the attic and digs through the trunk that holds her keepsakes. Perhaps I should have destroyed the trunk long ago, but it never occurred to me. I am one of those people who hangs onto everything.
These days he sits in his room at his desk and cuts things out of the newspaper. He does not think I've seen him, but I have. I walk quietly. I learned that when I was a boy. You did not walk quietly, my old man would fly off the handle. He hated a heavy walk. Me and my sisters got a lot of beltings because of the way we walked. My old man taught me to walk softly. When he was not drinking he would take me hunting and he would teach me how to walk like an Indian. When he was drinking, that was the way he wanted us to walk around the house. He never taught my sisters how to walk, he just expected it. He used to say girls ought to walk like girls, not water buffalo. My old man was a horrible, cruel drunk, and I am thankful that I managed to be a better father to my son.
But now the boy has pushed me out, will not let me in. I wish he respected me. I never did to him what my father did to me. I never made him walk quietly. I even let him come back home and take his old room when he lost his job.
When he was a child we used to talk about everything. Even the weird things he was interested in like horror movies and comic books and pyramid power. I did not like any of it, but I talked to him just the same, tried to understand his interests.
After his mother's death, he became quieter, more withdrawn. He will not accept she stepped out in front of a car and was killed and will not be back. I think he keeps expecting to look up and see her walk through the door.
I am sorry for him, even if his mother and I never got along. It happens that way so
metimes.
And these clippings of his, they worry me. Why is he cutting them out and saving them? That makes me very nervous. He thinks I do not know about them. Thinks I have not seen him cutting them out and pondering them, gluing them in his scrapbook, putting them in the bottom desk drawer under the family photo album.
And these long walks. Where does he go and what does he do? I wonder all the time, then feel guilty for wondering. He's a grown man and can take walks if he wants to. He probably walks and worries about not having a job, though he has not yet pushed hard enough to find one if you ask me. But I am sure it worries him. The walks probably help him get his mind off things. Then he comes back here and collects his clippings as a sort of hobby.
I hope that's it. Hope that explains his fascination with the clippings. I hate it when I think there is more to it than that.
One time, when he went on one of his walks, I snuck in and opened the desk drawer and got his scrapbook and looked to see what he was cutting out.
It was articles about the Choker murders snipped from a dozen newspapers. Local papers, out-of-state papers. Just about everything the newsstand sells in the way of papers. He cut out the pictures of the whores who had been strangled and glued them all in a row and underlined their names in red.
That worries me. And he has a scrapbook full of articles about the Choker from a half dozen different papers.
And the way he acts around me. Strange. Nervous. Sullen.
Today I asked him if he wanted some soup and he glared at me and would not answer. He turned his back and stared at the window and watched the rain gather on the glass, then he got up and got his raincoat and umbrella and went for a walk.
It was like when he was a little boy and he got mad about something and started being obstinate for no real reason, or sometimes because you disappointed him.
That is always the worst thing, disappointing your son. Him knowing you are not the man you want him to be.
After he was gone, I went to the window to see which way he was going, then I went to the desk drawer and took out the scrapbook and looked at them.