Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories (30 page)

  "Fine. Thank you."

  "Good. Lookin' forward to the Fourth?"

  David swallowed. "Well…" he began.

  "Myself, I'm takin' the family to the woods," said Coulter. "No lousy fireworks for us. Pilin' into the old bus and headin' out till the fireworks are over."

  "Driving," said David.

"Yes, sir,"
said Coulter. "Far as we can."

  It began by itself. No, he thought;
not now.
He forced it back into its darkness.

  "-tising business," Coulter finished.

  "What?" he asked.

  "Said I trust things are goin' well in the advertising business."

  David cleared his throat.

  "Oh, yes," he said. "Fine." He always forgot about the lie he'd told Coulter.

  When the train arrived he sat in the No Smoking car, knowing that Coulter always smoked a cigar en route. He didn't want to sit with Coulter. Not now.

  All the way to the city he sat looking out the window. Mostly he watched road and highway traffic; but, once, while the train rattled over a bridge, he stared down at the mirror like surface of a lake. Once he put his head back and looked up at the sun.

  He was actually to the elevator when he stopped.

  "Up?" said the man in the maroon uniform. He looked at David steadily. "Up?" he said. Then he closed the rolling doors.

  David stood motionless. People began to cluster around him. In a moment, he turned and shouldered by them, pushing through the revolving door. As he came out, the oven heat of July surrounded him. He moved along the sidewalk like a man asleep. On the next block he entered a bar.

  Inside, it was cold and dim. There were no customers. Not even the bartender was visible. David sank down in the shadow of a booth and took his hat off. He leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

  He couldn't do it. He simply could not go up to his office. No matter what Jean said, no matter what anyone said. He clasped his hands on the table edge and squeezed them until the ringers were pressed dry of blood. He just
wouldn't.

  "Help you?" asked a voice.

  David opened his eyes. The bartender was standing by the booth, looking down at him.

  "Yes, uh… beer," he said. He hated beer but he knew he had to buy something for the privilege of sitting in the chilly silence undisturbed. He wouldn't drink it.

  The bartender brought the beer and David paid for it. Then, when the bartender had gone, he began to turn the glass slowly on the table top. While he was doing this it began again. With a gasp, he pushed it away. No!, he told it, savagely.

  In a while he got up and left the bar. It was past ten. That didn't matter of course. They knew he was always late. They knew he always tried to break away from it and never could.

  His office was at the back of the suite, a small cubicle furnished only with a rug, sofa, and a small desk on which lay pencils and white paper. It was all he needed. Once, he'd had a secretary but he hadn't liked the idea of her sitting outside the door and listening to him scream.

  No one saw him enter. He let himself in from the hall through a private door. Inside, he relocked the door, then took off his suit coat and laid it across the desk. It was stuffy in the office so he walked across the floor and pulled up the window.

  Far below, the city moved. He stood watching it. How many of them? he thought.

  Sighing heavily, he turned. Well, he was here. There was no point in hesitating any longer. He was committed now. The best thing was to get it over and clear out.

  He drew the blinds, walked over to the couch and lay down. He fussed a little with the pillow, then stretched once and was still. Almost immediately, he felt his limbs going numb.

  It began.

  He did not stop it now. It trickled on his brain like melted ice. It rushed like winter wind. It spun like blizzard vapor. It leaped and ran and billowed and exploded and his mind was filled with it. He grew rigid and began to gasp, his chest twitching with breath, the beating of his heart a violent stagger. His hands drew in like white talons, clutching and scratching at the couch. He shivered and groaned and writhed. Finally he screamed. He screamed for a very long while.

  When it was done, he lay limp and motionless on the couch, his eyes like balls of frozen glass. When he could, he raised his arm and looked at his wristwatch. It was almost two.

  He struggled to his feet. His bones felt sheathed with lead but he managed to stumble to his desk and sit before it.

  There he wrote on a sheet of paper and, when he was finished, slumped across the desk and fell into exhausted sleep.

  Later, he woke up and took the sheet of paper to his superior, who, looking it over, nodded.

  "Four hundred eighty-six, huh?" the superior said. "You're sure of that?"

  "I'm sure," said David, quietly. "I watched every one." He didn't mention that Coulter and his family were among them.

  "All right," said his superior. "Let's see now. Four hundred fifty-two from traffic accidents, eighteen from drowning, seven from sun-stroke, three from fireworks, six from miscellaneous causes."

  Such as a little girl being burned to death, David thought. Such as a baby boy eating ant poison. Such as a woman being electrocuted; a man dying of snake bite.

  "Well," his superior said, "let's make it-oh, four hundred and fifty. It's always impressive when more people die than we predict."

  "Of course," David said.

  The item was on the front page of all the newspapers that afternoon. While David was riding home the man in front of him turned to his neighbour and said, "What I'd like to know is
how can they tell?"

  David got up and went back on the platform on the end of the car. Until he got off, he stood there listening to the train wheels and thinking about Labor Day.

15 - OLD HAUNTS

  Originally he'd intended to spend the one night in town at the Hotel Tiger. But it had occurred to him that maybe his old room was available. It was summer session now and there might not be a student living there. It was certainly worth a try. He could think of nothing more pleasant than sleeping in his old room, in his old bed.

  The house was the same. He moved up the cement steps, smiling at their still crumbled edges. Same old steps, he thought, still on the bum. As was the sagging screen door to the porch and the doorbell that had to be pushed in at an angle before connection was made. He shook his head, smiling, and wondered if Miss Smith were still alive.

  It wasn't Miss Smith who answered the bell. His heart sank as, instead of her tottering old form, a husky middle-aged woman came bustling to the door.

  "Yes?" she said, her voice a harsh, inhospitable sound.

  "Is Miss Smith still here?" he asked, hoping, in spite of everything, that she was.

  "No, Miss Ada's been dead for years."

  It was like a slap on his face. He felt momentarily stunned as he nodded at the woman.

  "I see," he said then. "I see. I used to room here while I was in college, you see, and I thought…"

  Miss Smith dead.

  "You going to school?" the woman asked.

  He didn't know whether to take it as insult or praise.

  "No, no," he said, "I'm just passing through on my way to Chicago. I graduated many years ago. I wondered if… anyone was living in the old room."

  "The hall room, you mean?" the woman asked, regarding him clinically.

  "That's right."

  "Not till fall," she said.

  "Could I…look at it?"

  "Well, I…"

  "I thought I might stay overnight," he said, hastily, "that is, if-"

  "Oh,
that's
all right." The woman warmed her tone. "If that's what you want."

  "I would," he said. "Sort of renew old acquaintanceship, you know."

  He smiled self-consciously, wishing he hadn't said that.

  "What would you want to pay?" asked the woman, more concerned with money than with memories.

  "Well, I tell you," he said, impulsively, "I used to pay twenty dollars a month. Suppose I pay you that?"

  "For one night?"

  He felt foolish. But he couldn't back down now even though he felt that his offer had been a nostalgic blunder. No room was worth twenty dollars a night.

  He caught himself. Why quibble? It was worth that much to relive old memories. Twenty dollars was nothing to him anymore. The past was.

  "Glad to pay it," he said. "Well worth it to me."

  He slid the bills from his wallet with awkward fingers and held them out to her.

  He glanced at the bathroom as they walked down the dim lit hall. The familiar sight made him smile. There was something wonderful about returning. He couldn't help it; there just was.

  "Yes, Miss Ada's been dead nigh onto five years," the woman said.

  His smile faded.

  When the woman opened the door to the room he wanted to stand there for a long moment looking at it before letting himself enter once more. But she stood waiting for him and he knew he'd feel ridiculous asking her to wait so he took a deep breath and went in.

Time travel.
The phrase crossed his mind as he entered the room. Because it seemed as if he was suddenly back; the new student stepping into the room for the first time, suitcase in hand, at the beginning of a new adventure.

  He stood there mutely, looking around the room, a sense of inexplicable fright taking hold of him. The room seemed to bring back everything.
Everything.
Mary and Norman and Spencer and David and classes and concerts and parties and dances and football games and beer-busts and all-night talks and everything. Memories crowded on him until it seemed that they would crush him.

  "It's a little dusty but I'll clean it up when you go out to eat," the woman said. "I'll go get you some sheets."

  He didn't hear her words or her footsteps moving down the hallway. He stood there possessed by the past.

  He didn't know what it was that made him shudder and look around suddenly. It wasn't a sound or anything he saw. It was a feeling in his body and mind; a sense of unreasonable foreboding.

  He jumped with a gasp as the door slammed violently shut. "It's the wind does it," said the woman returning with sheets for his old bed.

  Broadway The traffic light turned red and he eased down the brake. His gaze moved across the store fronts.

  There was the Crown Drug Store, still the same. Next to it, Flora Dame's Shoe Store. His eyes moved across the street. The Glendale Shop was still there. Barth's Clothes was still in its old location too.

  Something in his mind seemed to loosen and he realized that he had been afraid of seeing the town changed. For when he'd turned the corner onto Broadway and seen that Mrs. Sloane's Book Shoppe and The College Grille were gone he'd felt almost a sense of betrayal. The town he remembered existed intact in his mind and it gave him a tense, restless feeling to see it partially changed. It was like meeting an old friend and discovering, with a shock, that one of his legs was gone.

  But enough things were the same to bring the solemn smile back to his lips.

  The College Theatre where he and his friends had gone to midnight shows on Saturday nights after a date or long hours of study. The Collegiate Bowling Alleys; upstairs from them, the pool room.

  And downstairs…

  Impulsively, he pulled the car to the curb and switched off the motor. He sat there looking, for a moment, at the entrance to the Golden Campus. Then he slid quickly from the car.

  The same old awning hung over the doorway, its once gaudy colours worn conservative by time and weather. He moved forward, a smile playing on his lips.

  Then a sense of overpowering depression struck him as he stood looking down the steep, narrow staircase. He caught hold of the railing with his fingers and, after hesitating, let himself down slowly. He hadn't remembered the stairway being
this
narrow.

  Near the bottom of the stairs, a whirring sound reached his ears. Someone was waxing the small dance floor with rotary brushes. He moved down the last step and saw the small black man following the gently bucking machine around the floor. He saw and heard the metal nose of the polisher bump into one of the columns that marked the boundaries of the dance floor.

  Another frown crossed his face. The place was so small, so dingy. Surely memory hadn't erred that badly. No, he hastily explained to himself. No, it was because the place was empty and there were no lights. It was because the jukebox wasn't frothing with coloured bubbles and there were no couples dancing.

  Unconsciously, he slid his hands into his trouser pockets, a pose he hadn't assumed more than once or twice since he'd left college eighteen years before. He moved closer to the dance floor, nodding once to the low, battered bandstand as one would to an old acquaintance.