Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories (15 page)

  Mr Jasper got it all.

  Eyes beginning to emboss, he would wave it back. The women returned it. Thus did the smoke circulate until thinned out or reinforced by new, yet more intense, exhalations.
Poof!
And between waving and ladling and swallowing, Mr Jasper had spasms. The tannic acid of his tea hardly served to stem the course of burning in his stomach. He would pay his forty cents with oscillating fingers and return to work, a cracking man.

  To face a full afternoon of complaints and queries and thumbing of merchandise and the topping of all by the girl who shared the counter with him and chewed gum as though she wanted the people in Arabia to hear her chewing. The smacking and the popping and the grinding made Mr Jasper's insides do frenzied contortions, made him stand statue like and disordered or else burst out with a hissing:

'Stop that disgusting sound!'

  Life was full of irritations.

  Then there were the neighbours, the people who lived upstairs and on the sides. The society of
them,
that ubiquitous brotherhood which always lived in the apartments around Mr Jasper.

  They were a unity, those people. There was a touchstone of attitude in their behaviour, a distinct criterion of method.

  It consisted of walking with extra weighty tread, of reassembling furniture with sustained regularity, of throwing wild and noisy parties every other night and inviting only those people who promised to wear hobnailed boots and dance the chicken reel. Of arguing about all subjects at top voice, of playing only cowboy and hillbilly music on a radio whose volume knob was irretrievably stuck at its farthest point. Of owning a set of lungs disguised as a two to twelve months old child, which puffed out each morning to emit sounds reminiscent of the lament of air raid sirens.

  Mr Jasper's present nemesis was Albert Radenhausen, Junior, age seven months, possessor of one set of incredibly hardy lungs which did their best work between four and five in the morning.

  Mr Jasper would find himself rolling on to his thin back in the dark, furnished, two-room apartment. He would find himself staring at the ceiling and waiting for the sound. It got to a point where his brain dragged him from needed sleep exactly ten seconds before four each morning. If Albert Radenhausen, Junior, chose to slumber on, it did no good to Mr Jasper. He just kept waiting for the cries.

  He would try to sleep, but jangling concentration made him prey, if not to the expected wailing, then to the host of other sounds which beset his hypersensitive ears.

  A car coughing past in the street. A rattle of Venetian blind. A set of lone footsteps somewhere in the house. The drip of a faucet, the barking of a dog, the rubbing legs of crickets, the creaking of wood. Mr Jasper could not control it all. Those sound makers he could not stuff, pad, twist off, adjust to - kept plaguing him. He would shut his eyes until they hurt, grip tight fists at his sides.

  Sleep still eluded. He would jolt up, heaving aside the sheets and blankets, and sit there staring numbly into the blackness, waiting for Albert Radenhausen, Junior, to make his utterance so he could lie down again.

  Analysing in the blackness, his mind would click out progressions of thought. Unduly sensitive? - he would comment within. I deny this vociferously. I am aware, Mr Jasper would self-claim. No more. I have ears. I can hear, can't I?

  It was suspicious.

  What morning in the litter of mornings that notion came, Mr Jasper could not recall. But once it had come it would not be dismissed. Though the definition of it was blunted by passing days, the core remained unremovable.

  Sometimes in a moment of teeth-gritting duress, the idea would reoccur. Other times it would be only a vague current of impression flowing beneath the surface.

  But it stuck. All these things that happened to him. Were they subjective or objective, within or without? They seemed to pile up so often, each detail linking until the sum of provocations almost drove him mad. It almost seemed as though it were done with intent. As if…

As if it were a plan.

  Mr Jasper experimented.

  Initial equipment consisted of one white pad, lined, plus his ball-point pen. Primary approach consisted of jotting down various exasperations with the time of their occurrence, the location, the sex of the offender and the relative grossness of the annoyance; this last aspect gradated by numbers ranging from one to ten.

  Example one, clumsily notated while still half asleep.

Baby crying, 4.52 a.m., next door to room, male,
7.

  Following this entry, Mr Jasper settled back on his flattened pillow with a sigh approximating satisfaction. The start was made. In a few days he would know with assurance if his unusual speculation was justified.

  Before he left the house at eight-seventeen a.m., Mr Jasper had accumulated three more entries; viz:

Loud thumping on floor,
6.33
a.m., upstairs from room, male (guess),
5.

Traffic noise, 7.00 a.m. outside of room, males, 6.

Radio on loud, 7.40 a.m. on, upstairs from room, female,
7.

  One rather odd facet of Mr Jasper's efforts came to his attention as he left his small apartment. This was, in short, that he had put down much of his temper through this simple expedient of written analysis. Not that the various noises had failed, at first, to set his teeth on edge and cause his hands to flex involuntarily at his sides. They had not. Yet the translation of amorphous vexation into words, the reduction of an aggravation to one succinct memorandum somehow helped. It was strange but pleasing.

  The bus trip to work provided further notations.

  The sniffing man drew one immediate and automatic entry. But once that irritant was disposed of, Mr Jasper was alarmed to note the rapid accumulation of four more. No matter where he moved on the bus there was fresh cause for drawing pen-point from scabbard and stabbing out more words.

Garlic breath, 8.27 a.m., bus, male,
7.

Heavy jostling, 8.28 a.m., bus, both sexes, 8.

Feet stepped on. No apology, 8.29 a.m., bus, woman,
9.

Driver telling me to go to back of bus, 8.33 a.m., bus, male, 9-

  Then Mr Jasper found himself standing again beside the man with the uncommon cold. He did not take the pad from his pocket but his eyes closed and his teeth clamped together bitterly. Later he erased the original grading for the man.

10!
he wrote in a fury.

  And at lunch, amidst usual antagonisations, Mr Jasper, with a fierce and jaundiced eye, saw system to it all.

  He seized on a blank pad page.

1. At least one irritation per five minutes. (Twelve per hour.) Not perfectly timed. Some occurring two in a minute.

Clever. Trying to throw me off the track by breaking continuity.

2. Each of the 12 hourly irritations is worse than the one before. The last of the 12 almost makes me explode.

THEORY: By placing the irritations so that each one tops the preceding one the final hourly addition is thus designed to provide maximum nerve impact: i.e.
-
Steering me into insanity!

  He sat there, his soup getting cold, a wild scientific lustre to his eyes, investigatory heat churning up his system. Yes, by Heaven, yes, yes,
yes
!

  But he must make sure.

  He finished his lunch, ignoring smoke and chattering and unpalatable food. He slunk back to his counter. He spent a joyous afternoon scribbling down entries in his journal of convulsions.

  The system held.

  It stood firm before unbiased test. One irritation per five minutes. Some of them, naturally, were so subtle that only a man with Mr Jasper's intuitive grasp, a man with a quest, could notice them. These aggravations were underplayed.

  And cleverly so! - realised Mr Jasper. Underplayed and intended to dupe.

  Well, he would not be duped.

Tie rack knocked over, 1.18 p.m., store, female,
7.

Fly walking on hand, 1.43 p.m., store, female
(?),
8.

Faucet in washroom splashing clothes, 2.19 p.m., store (sex),
9.

Refusal to buy tie because torn,
2.38
p.m., store, WOMAN, 10.

  These were typical entries for the afternoon.

  They were jotted down with a bellicose satisfaction by a shaking Mr Jasper. A Mr Jasper whose incredible theory was being vindicated.

  About three o'clock he decided to eliminate those numbers from one to five since no provocations were mild enough to be judged so leniently.

  By four he had discarded every grading but nine and ten.

  By five he was seriously considering a new system which began at ten and ranged up to twenty-five.

  Mr Jasper had planned to compile at least a week's annotations before preparing his case. But, somehow, the shocks of the day weakened him. His entries grew more heated, his penmanship less legible.

  And, at eleven that night, as the people next door got their second wind and resumed their party with a great shout of laughter, Mr Jasper hurled his pad against the wall with a choking oath and stood there trembling violently. It was definite.

  They were out to get him.

  Suppose, he thought, there was a secret legion in the world. And that their prime devotion was to drive him from his senses.

  Wouldn't it be possible for them to do this insidious thing without another soul knowing it? Couldn't they arrange their maddening little intrusions on his sanity so cleverly that it might always seem as if
he
were at fault; that he was only a hypersensitive little man who saw malicious intent in every accidental irritation? Wasn't that possible?

Yes.
His mind pounded out the acceptance over and over.

  It was conceivable, feasible, possible and, by heaven, he believed it!

  Why not? Couldn't there be a great sinister legion of people who met in secret cellars by guttering candlelight? And sat there, beady eyes shining with nasty intent, as their leader spoke of more plans for driving Mr Jasper straight to hell?

  Sure! Agent X assigned to the row behind Mr Jasper at a movie, there to talk during parts of the picture in which Mr Jasper was most absorbed, there to rattle paper bags at regular intervals, there to masticate popcorn deafeningly until Mr Jasper hunched up, blind-raging, into the aisle and stomped back to another seat.

  And here, Agent Y would take over with candy and crinkly wrappers and extra moist sneezes.

  Possible. More than possible. It could have been going on for years without his ever acquiring the slightest inkling of its existence. A subtle, diabolical intrigue, near impossible to detect. But now, at last, stripped of its concealing robes, shown in all its naked, awful reality.

  Mr Jasper lay abed, cogitating.

  No, he thought with a scant remainder of rationality, it is silly. It is a point outlandishly taken.

  Why should these people do these things? That was all one had to ask. What was their motive?

  Wasn't it absurd to think that all these people were out to get him? Dead, Mr Jasper was worth nothing. Certainly his two thousand dollar policy subdivided among a vast hidden legion would not amount to more than three or four cents a plotter. Even if he were to be coerced into naming them all as his beneficiaries.

  Why, then, did Mr Jasper find himself drifting helplessly into the kitchenette? Why, then, did he stand there so long, balancing the long carving knife in his hand? And why did he shake when he thought of his idea?

  Unless it was true.

  Before he retired Mr Jasper put the carving blade into its cardboard sheath. Then, almost automatically, he found himself sliding the knife into the inside pocket of his suit coat.

  And, horizontal in the blackness, eyes open, his flat chest rising and falling with unsteady beat, he sent out his bleak ultimatum to the legion that might be: 'If you are there, I will take no more.'

  Then there was Albert Radenhausen, Junior, again at four in the morning. Jolting Mr Jasper into waking state, touching one more match to his inflammable system. There were the footsteps, the car horns, the dogs barking, the blinds rattling, the faucet dripping, the blankets bunching, the pillow flattening, the pyjamas twisting. And morning with its burning toast and bad coffee and broken cup and loud radio upstairs and broken shoelace.

  And Mr Jasper's body grew rigid with unspeakable fury and he whined and hissed and his muscles petrified and his hands shook and he almost wept. Forgotten was his pad and list, lost in violent temper. Only one thing remained. And that… was self-defence.