Bradbury, Ray - SSC 13 (12 page)

 
          
“You
will not be held. If you don’t wish to be examined, you will not be. But I am
hoping you will help by offering us your services.”

 
          
“I
might,” said Lantry.

 
          
“But
tell me,” said McClure. “What were you doing at the morgue?”

 
          
“Nothing.”

 
          
“I
heard you talking when I came in.”

 
          
“I
was merely curious.”

 
          
“You’re
lying. That is very bad, Mr. Lantry. The truth is far better. The truth is, is
it not, that you are dead and, being the only one of your sort, were lonely.
Therefore you killed people to have company.”

 
          
“How
does that follow?”

 
          
McClure
laughed. “Logic, my dear fellow. Once I
knew
you were really dead, a moment ago, really a—what do you call it—a vampire
(silly word!) I tied you immediately to the Incinerator blasts. Before that
there was no reason to connect you. But once the one piece fell into place, the
fact that you were dead, then it was simple to guess your loneliness, your
hate, your envy, all of the tawdry motivations of a walking corpse. It took
only an instant then to see the Incinerators blown to blazes, and then to think
of you, among the bodies at the morgue, seeking help, seeking friends and
people like yourself to work with—”

 
          
“Blast
you!” Lantry was out of the chair. He was halfway to the other man when McClure
rolled over and scuttled away, flinging the sherry decanter. With a great
despair Lantry realized that, like an idiot, he had thrown away his one chance
to kill McClure. He should have done it earlier. It had been Lantry’s one
weapon, his safety margin. If people in a society never
killed
each other, they never
suspected
one another. You could walk up to any one of them and kill him.

 
          
“Come
back here!” Lantry threw the knife.

 
          
McClure
got behind a chair. The idea of flight, of protection, of fighting, was still
new to him. He had part of the idea, but there was still a bit of luck on
Lantry’s side if Lantry wanted to use it.

 
          
“Oh,
no,” said McClure, holding the chair between himself and the advancing man.
“You want to kill me. It’s odd, but true. I can’t understand it. You want to
cut me with that knife or something like that, and it’s up to me to prevent you
from doing such an odd thing.”

 
          
“I
will
kill you!” Lantry let it slip
out. He cursed himself. That was the worst possible thing to say.

 
          
Lantry
lunged across the chair, clutching at McClure.

 
          
McClure
was very logical. “It won’t do you any good to kill me. You
know
that.” They wrestled and held each
other in a wild, toppling shuffle. Tables fell over, scattering articles. “You
remember what happened in the morgue?”

 
          
“I
don’t care!” screamed Lantry.

 
          
“You
didn’t raise
those
dead, did you?”

 
          
“I
don’t care!” cried Lantry.

 
          
“Look
here,” said McClure, reasonably. “There will never be any more like you, ever,
there’s no use.”

 
          
“Then
I’ll destroy all of you, all of you!” screamed Lantry.

 
          
“And
then what? You’ll still be alone, with no more like you about.”

 
          
“I’ll
go to Mars. They have tombs there. I’ll find more like myself!”

 
          
“No,”
said McClure. “The executive order went through yesterday. All of the tombs are
being deprived of their bodies. They’ll be burned in the next week.”

 
          
They
fell together to the floor. Lantry got his hands on McClure’s throat.

 
          
“Please,”
said McClure. “Do you see, you’ll
die
.”

 
          
“What
do you mean?” cried Lantry.

 
          
“Once
you kill all of us, and you’re alone, you’ll die! The hate will die. That hate
is what moved you,
nothing else!
That
envy moves you. Nothing else! You’ll die, inevitably. You’re not immortal.
You’re not even alive, you’re nothing but a moving hate.”

 
          
“I
don’t care!” screamed Lantry, and began choking the man, beating his head with
his fists, crouched on the defenseless body. McClure looked up at him with
dying eyes.

 
          
The
front door opened. Two men came in.

 
          
“I
say,” said one of them. “What’s going on? A new game?”

 
          
Lantry
jumped back and began to run.

 
          
“Yes,
a new game!” said McClure, struggling up. “Catch him and you win!”

 
          
The
two men caught Lantry. “We win,” they said.

 
          
“Let
me go!” Lantry thrashed, hitting them across their faces, bringing blood.

 
          
“Hold
him tight!” cried McClure.

 
          
They
held him.

 
          
“A
rough game, what?” one of them said. “What do we do
now?
”

 
          
The
beetle hissed along the shining road. Rain fell out of the sky and a wind
ripped at the dark green wet trees. In the beetle, his hands on the half-wheel,
McClure was talking. His voice was susurrant, a whispering, a hypnotic thing.
The two other men sat in the back seat. Lantry sat, or rather lay, in the front
seat, his head back, his eyes faintly open, the glowing green light of the dash
dials showing on his cheeks. His mouth was relaxed. He did not speak.

 
          
McClure
talked quietly and logically, about life and moving, about death and not
moving, about the sun and the great sun Incinerator, about the emptied
tombyard, about hatred and how hate lived and made a clay man live and move,
and how illogical it all was, it all was, it all was. One was dead, was dead,
was dead, that was all, all, all. One did not try to be otherwise. The car
whispered on the moving road. The rain spattered gently on the windshield. The
men in the back seat conversed quietly. Where were they going, going? To the
Incinerator, of course. Cigarette smoke moved slowly up on the air, curling and
tying into itself in gray loops and spirals. One was dead and must accept it.

 
          
Lantry
did not move. He was a marionette, the strings cut. There was only a tiny
hatred in his heart, in his eyes, like twin coals, feeble, glowing, fading.

 
          
I
am Poe, he thought. I am all that is left of Edgar Allan Poe, and I am all that
is left of Ambrose Bierce and all that is left of a man named Lovecraft. I am a
gray night bat with sharp teeth, and I am a square black monolith monster. I am
Osiris and Bal and Set. I am the Necronomicon, the Book of the Dead. I am the
house of Usher, falling into flame. I am the Red Death. I am the man mortared
into the catacomb with a cask of Amontillado … I am a dancing skeleton. I am a
coffin, a shroud, a lightning bolt reflected in an old house window. I am an
autumn-empty tree, I am a rapping, flinging shutter. I am a yellowed volume
turned by a claw hand. I am an organ played in an attic at midnight. I am a
mask, a skull mask behind an oak tree on the last day of October. I am a poison
apple bobbling in a water tub for child noses to bump at, for child teeth to
snap … I am a black candle lighted before an inverted cross. I am a coffin lid,
a sheet with eyes, a foot-step on a black stairwell. I am Dunsany and Machen
and I am the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I am The Monkey’s Paw and I am The
Phantom Rickshaw. I am the Cat and the Canary, the Gorilla, the Bat. I am the
ghost of Hamlet’s father on the castle wall.

 
          
All
of these things am I. And now these last things will be burned. While I lived
they
still lived. While I moved and
hated and existed,
they
still existed.
I am
all
that remembers them. I am
all of them that
still
goes on, and
will
not
go on after tonight.
Tonight, all of us, Poe and Bierce and Hamlet’s father, we burn together. They
will make a big heap of us and burn us like a bonfire, like things of Guy
Fawkes’ day, gasoline, torches, cries, and all!

 
          
And
what a wailing will we put up. The world will be clean of us, but in our going
we shall say, oh what is the world like, clean of fear, where is the dark
imagination from the dark time, the thrill and the anticipation, the suspense
of old October, gone, never more to come again, flattened and smashed and
burned by the rocket people, by the Incinerator people, destroyed and
obliterated, to be replaced by doors that open and close and lights that go on
and off without fear. If only you could remember how once
we
lived, what Halloween was to us, and what Poe was, and how we
gloried in the dark morbidities. One more drink, dear friends, of Amontillado,
before the burning. All of this, all, exists but in one last brain on earth. A
whole world dying tonight. One more drink, pray.

 
          
“Here
we are,” said McClure.

 
          
The
Incinerator was brightly lighted. There was quiet music nearby. McClure got out
of the beetle, came around to the other side. He opened the door. Lantry simply
lay there. The talking and the logical talking had slowly drained him of life.
He was no more than wax now, with a small glow in his eyes. This future world,
how the men
talked
to you, how
logically they reasoned away your life. They wouldn’t believe in him. The force
of their disbelief froze him. He could not move his arms or his legs. He could
only mumble senselessly, coldly, eyes flickering.

 
          
McClure
and the two others helped him out of the car, put him in a golden box, and
rolled him on a roller table into the warm glowing interior of the building.

 
          
I
am Edgar Allan Poe, I am Ambrose Bierce, I am Halloween, I am a coffin, a
shroud, a Monkey’s Paw, a Phantom, a Vampire …

 
          
“Yes,
yes,” said McClure, quietly, over him. “I know. I know.”

 
          
The
table glided. The walls swung over him and by him, the music played. You are
dead, you are logically dead.

 
          
I
am Usher, I am the Maelstrom, I am the MS Found In A Bottle, I am the Pit and I
am the Pendulum, I am the Telltale Heart, I am the Raven nevermore, nevermore.

 
          
“Yes,”
said McClure, as they walked softly. “I know.”

 
          
“I
am in the catacomb,” cried Lantry.

 
          
“Yes,
the catacomb,” said the walking man over him.

 
          
“I
am being chained to a wall, and there is no bottle of Amontillado here!” cried
Lantry weakly, eyes closed.

 
          
“Yes,”
someone said.

 
          
There
was movement. The flame door opened.

 
          
“Now
someone is mortaring up the cell, closing me in!”

 
          
“Yes,
I
know
.” A whisper.

 
          
The
golden box slid into the flame lock.

 
          
“I’m
being walled in! A very good joke indeed! Let us be gone!” A wild scream and
much laughter.