Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories (11 page)

  The door closed behind her. He sank back. He felt a terrible sickness in himself. Now, he thought, they will all turn against me in defence of an addle-witted little girl. Dr. Ramsay would have more fuel for his simple little fire.

  And they were right.

  He couldn't keep his mind from it. They
were
right. He knew it. In that far recess of mind which he could not cow with thoughtless passion, he knew he was a stupid fool. I have no right to teach others. I cannot even teach myself to be a human being. He wanted to cry out the words and weep confessions and throw himself from one of the open windows.

  "The whispering will stop!" he demanded fiercely.

  The room was quiet. He sat tensely, waiting for any signs of militance. I am your teacher, he told himself, I am to be obeyed, I am…

  The concept died. He drifted away again. What were students or a girl asking about mid-term papers? What was anything?

  He glanced at his watch. In a few minutes the train would pull into Centralia. She would change to the main line express to Indianapolis. Then up to Detroit and her mother. Gone.

  Gone. He tried to visualize the word, put it into living terms. But the thought of the house without her was almost beyond his means. Because it wasn't the house without her; it was something else.

  He began to think of what John had said.

  Was it possible? He was in a mood to accept the incredible. It was incredible that she had left him. Why not extend the impossibilities that were happening to him?

  All right then, he thought angrily. The house is alive. I've given it this life with deadly outpourings of wrath. I hope to God that when I get back there and enter the door, the roof collapses. I hope the walls buckle and I'm crushed to pulp by the crushing weight of plaster and wood and brick. That's what I want. Some agency to do away with me. I cannot drive myself to it. If only a gun would commit my suicide for me. Or gas blow its deadly fumes at me for the asking or a razor slice my flesh upon request.

  The door opened. He glanced up. Dr. Ramsay stood there, face drawn into a mask of indignation. Behind him in the hall Chris could see the girl, her face streaked with tears.

  "A moment, Neal," Ramsay said sharply and stepped back into the hall again.

  Chris sat at the desk staring at the door. He felt suddenly very tired, exhausted. He felt as if getting up and moving into the hall was more than he could possibly manage. He glanced at the class. A few of them were trying to repress smiles.

  "For tomorrow you will finish the reading of
King Lear,"
he said. Some of them groaned.

  Ramsay appeared in the doorway again, his cheeks pink.

  "Are you coming, Neal?" he asked loudly.

  Chris felt himself tighten with anger as he walked across the room and out into the hall. The girl lowered her eyes. She stood beside Dr. Ramsay's portly frame.

  "What's this I hear, Neal?" Ramsay asked.

  That's right, Chris thought. Don't ever call me professor. I'll never be one, will I? You'll see to that, you bastard.

  "I don't understand," he said, as coolly as possible.

  "Miss Forbes here claims you ejected her from class for no reason at all."

  "Then Miss Forbes is lying quite stupidly," he said. Let me hold this anger, he thought. Don't let it flood loose. He shook with holding it back.

  The girl gasped and took out her handkerchief again. Ramsay turned and patted her shoulder.

  "Go in my office, child. Wait for me."

  She turned away slowly. Politician!-cried Neal's mind. How easy it is for you to be popular with them. You don't have to deal with their bungling minds.

  Miss Forbes turned the corner and Ramsay looked back.

  "Your explanation had better be good," he said. "I'm getting a little weary, Neal, of your behaviour."

  Chris didn't speak. Why am I standing here?-he suddenly wondered. Why, in all the world, am I standing in this dim lit hall and, voluntarily, listening to this pompous boor berate me?

  "I'm waiting, Neal."

  Chris tightened. "I told you she was lying," he said quietly.

  "I choose to believe otherwise," said Dr. Ramsay, his voice trembling.

  A shudder ran through Chris. His head moved forward and he spoke slowly, teeth clenched.

  "You can believe anything you damn well please."

  Ramsay's mouth twitched.

  "I think it's time you appeared before the board," he muttered.

  "Fine!" said Chris loudly. Ramsay made a move to close the classroom door. Chris gave it a kick and it banged against the wall. A girl gasped.

  "What's the matter?" Chris yelled. "Don't you want your students to hear me tell you off? Don't you even want them to suspect that you're a dolt, a windbag, an ass!"

  Ramsay raised shaking fists before his chest. His lips trembled violently.

  "This will do, Neal!" he cried.

  Chris reached out and shoved the heavy man aside, snarling, "Oh,
get
out of my way!"

  He started away. The hall fled past him. He heard the bell ring. It sounded as though it rang in another existence. The building throbbed with life; students poured from classrooms.

  "Neal!" called Dr. Ramsay.

  He kept walking. Oh, God, let me out of here, I'm suffocating, he thought. My hat, my briefcase. Leave them. Get out of here. Dizzily he descended the stairs surrounded by milling students. They swirled about him like an unidentifiable tide. His brain was far from them.

  Staring ahead dully he walked along the first floor hall. He turned and went out the door and down the porch steps to the campus sidewalk. He paid no attention to the students who stared at his ruffled blond hair, his mussed clothes. He kept walking. I've done it, he thought belligerently. I've made the break.
I'm free!

  I'm sick.

  All the way down to Main Street and out on the bus he kept renewing his stores of anger. He went over those few moments in the hallway again and again. He summoned up the vision of Ramsay's stolid face, repeated his words. He kept himself taut and furious. I'm glad, he told himself forcibly. Everything is solved. Sally has left me. Good. My job is done. Good. Now I'm free to do as I like. A strained and angry joy pounded through him. He felt alone, a stranger in the world and glad of it.

  At his stop, he got off the bus and walked determinedly toward the house pretending to ignore the pain he felt at approaching it. It's just an empty house, he thought. Nothing more. Despite all puerile theories, it is nothing but a house.

  Then, when he went in, he found her sitting on the couch.

  He almost staggered as if someone had struck him. He stood dumbly, staring at her. She had her hands tightly clasped. She was looking at him.

  He swallowed.

  "Well," he managed to say.

  "I…" Her throat contracted. "Well…"

  "Well
what!"
he said quickly and loudly to hide the shaking in his voice.

  She stood up. "Chris, please. Won't you… ask me to stay?" She looked at him like a little girl, pleading.

  The look enraged him. All his day dreams shattered; he saw the growing thing of new ideas ground under foot.

  "Ask you to stay!" he yelled at her. "By God, I'll ask you nothing!"

  "Chris! Don't!"

  She's buckling, cried his mind. She's cracking. Get her now. Get her out of here. Drive her from these walls!

  "Chris," she sobbed, "be kind. Please be kind."

"Kind!"

  He almost choked on the word. He felt a wild heat coursing his body.

  "Have
you
been kind? Driving me crazy, into a pit of despair. I can't get out. Do you understand? Never. Never! Do you understand that! I'll never write. I
can't
write! You drained it out of me! You killed it! Understand
that? Killed
it!"

  She backed away toward the dining room. He followed her, hands shaking at his sides, feeling that she had driven him to this confession and hating her the more for it.

  "Chris," she murmured in fright.

  It seemed as if his rage grew cell-like, swelling him with fury until he was nothing of bone and blood but a hating accusation made flesh.

  "I don't want you!" he yelled. "You're right, I don't want you! Get out of here!"

  Her eyes were wide, her mouth an open wound. Suddenly she ran past him, eyes glistening with tears. She fled through the front doorway.

  He went to the window and watched her running down the block, her dark brown hair streaming behind her.

  Dizzy suddenly, lie sank down on the couch and closed his eyes. He dug his nails into his palms. Oh God, I
am
sick, his mind churned.

  He twitched and looked around stupidly. What was it? This feeling that he was sinking into the couch, into the floorboards, dissolving in the air, joining the molecules of the house. He whimpered softly, looking around. His head ached; he pressed a palm against his forehead.

  "What?" he muttered. "What?"

  He stood up. As though there were fumes he tried to smell them. As though it were a sound he tried to hear it. He turned around to see it. As though there were something with depth and length and width; something menacing.

  He wavered, fell back on the couch. He stared around. There was nothing, all intangible. It might only be in the mind. The furniture lay as it did before. The sunlight filtered through the windows, piercing the gauzelike curtains, making gold patterns on the inlaid wooden floor. The walls were still creamy, the ceiling was as it was before. Yet there was this darkening, darkening…

What?

  He pushed up and walked dizzily around the room. He forgot about Sally. He was in the dining room. He touched the table, he stared at the dark oak. He went into the kitchen. He stood by the sink and looked out the window.

  Far up the block, he saw her walking, stumbling. She must have been waiting for the bus. Now she couldn't wait any longer and she was walking away from the house, away from him.

  "I'll go after her," he muttered.

  No, he thought. No, I won't go after her like a…

  He forgot like what. He stared down at the sink. He felt drunk. Everything was fuzzy on the edges.

  She's washed the cups. The broken saucer was thrown away.

  He looked at the nick on his thumb. It was dried. He'd forgotten about it.

  He looked around suddenly as if someone had sneaked behind him. He stared at the wall. Something was rising. He felt it. It's not me. But it had to be; it had to be imagination.

Imagination!

  He slammed a fist on the sink. I'll write. Write,
write.
Sit down and drain it all away in words; this feeling of anguish and terror and loneliness. Write it out of my system.

  He cried, "Yes!"

  He ran from the kitchen. He refused to accept the instinctive fear in himself. He ignored the menace that seemed to thicken the very air.

  A rug slipped. He kicked it aside. He sat down. The air hummed. He tore off the cover on the typewriter. He sat nervously, staring at the keyboard. The moment before attack. It was in the air. But it's
my
attack!-he thought triumphantly, my attack on stupidity and fear.

  He rolled a sheet into the typewriter. He tried to collect his throbbing thoughts. Write, the word called in his mind. Write-
now.

  "Now!" he cried.

  He felt the desk lurch against his shins.

  The flaring pain knifed open his senses. He kicked the desk in automatic frenzy. More pain. He kicked again. The desk flung back at him. He screamed.

He'd seen it move.

  He tried to back off, the anger torn from him. The typewriter keys moved under his hands. His eyes swept down. He couldn't tell whether he was moving the keys or whether they moved by themselves. He pulled hysterically, trying to dislodge his fingers but he couldn't. The keys were moving faster than his eye could see. They were a blur of motion. He felt them shredding his skin, peeling his fingers. They were raw. Blood started to ooze out.

  He cried out and pulled. He managed to jerk away his fingers and jump back in the chair.

  His belt buckle caught, the desk drawer came flying out. It slammed into his stomach. He yelled again. The pain was a black cloud pouring over his head.

  He threw down a hand to shove in the drawer. He saw the yellow pencils lying there. They glared. His hand slipped, it banged into the drawer.

  One of the pencils jabbed at him.