Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories (31 page)

  He stood by the dance floor edge and thought of Mary.

  How many times had they circled that tiny area, moving to the rhythms that pulsed from the glowing jukebox? Dancing slowly, their bodies intimately close, her warm hand idly stroking the back of his neck. How many times? Something tightened in his stomach. He could almost see her face again. He turned away quickly from the dance floor and looked at the dark wooden booths.

  A forced smile raised his lips. Were they still there? He moved around the edge of a column and started for the back.

  "You lookin' for somebody?" the old black man asked.

  "No, no," he said. "I just want to look at something."

  He moved down the rows of booths, trying to ignore the feeling of awkwardness. Which one is it? he asked himself. He couldn't remember; they all looked the same. He stopped, hands on hips, and looked at all the booths, shaking his head slowly. On the dance floor, the black man finished his polishing, pulled the plug out and drew the lumbering machine away. The place grew deathly still.

  He found them in the third booth he looked at. Worn thin, the letters almost as dark as the surrounding wood but, most assuredly, there. He slid into the booth and looked at them.

B.J.
Bill Johnson. And, under the initials, the year 1939.

  He thought about all the nights he and Spence and Dave and Norm had sat in this booth dissecting the universe with the deft, assured scalpels of college seniors.

  "We thought we had it all," he murmured. "Every darn bit of it."

  Slowly, he took off his hat and set it down on the table. What he wished for now was a glass of the old beer: that thick, malty brew that filled your veins and pumped your heart, as Spence used to say.

  He nodded his head in appreciation, toasting a quiet toast.

  "To you," he whispered. "The unbeatable past."

  As he said it, he looked up from the table and saw a young man standing far across the room at the shadowy foot of the stairway. Johnson looked at the young man, unable to see him sharply without his glasses on.

  After a moment, the young man turned and went back up the stairs. Johnson smiled to himself. Come back at six, he thought. The place doesn't open till six.

  That made him think again of all the nights he'd spent down here in the musty dimness, drinking beer, talking, dancing, spending his youth with the casual improvidence of a millionaire.

  He sat silent in the semi-darkness, memories swirling about him like a restless tide, lapping at his mind, forcing him to keep his lips pressed together because he knew that all this was gone forever.

  In the midst of it, the memory of her came again. Mary, he thought and he wondered what had ever become of Mary?

  It started again as he walked under the archway that led to the campus. An uneasy feeling that past and present were blending, that he was tightrope-walking between the two of them, on the verge of falling into either one.

  The feeling dogged his steps, chilling the sense of elation he felt at being back.

  He'd look at a building, thinking of the classes he'd taken there, the people he'd known there. Then, almost in the same moment, he'd see his present life, the dull empty rounds of selling. The months and years of solitary driving around the country. Ending only in return to a home he disliked, a wife he did not love.

  He kept thinking about Mary. What a fool he'd been to let her go. To think, with the thoughtless assurance of youth, that the world was replete with endless possibilities. He'd thought it a mistake to choose so early in life and embrace the present good. He'd been a great one for looking for greener pastures. He'd kept looking until all his pastures were brown with time.

  That feeling again: a combination of sensations. A creeping dissatisfaction that gnawed at him and choked him-and a restless, pursued feeling. An inescapable urge to look over his shoulder and see who was following him. He couldn't dismiss it and it bothered and upset him.

  Now he was walking along the east side of the campus, his suit coat thrown over his right arm, his woven hat cocked back on his balding head. He could feel small sweat drops trickling down his back as he walked.

  He wondered if he should stop and sit on the campus awhile. There were several students sprawled out under the trees, laughing and chatting.

  But he was leery of speaking to students anymore. Just before he'd come onto the campus, he'd stopped at the Campus Cafe for a glass of iced tea. He'd sat next to a student there and tried to start a conversation.

  The young man had treated him with insufferable deference. He hadn't said anything about it, of course, but it had been highly offensive.

  Something else had happened too. While he was moving for the cashier's booth, a young man had walked by outside. Johnson had thought he knew him and had raised his arm to catch the student's attention.

  Then he'd realized it was impossible that he knew any of the current students and he'd guiltily lowered his arm. He had paid his check, feeling very depressed.

  The depression still clung to him as he walked up the steps of the Liberal Arts Building.

  He turned at the head of the steps and looked back over the campus. In spite of deflated sentiment, it gave him a lift to see the campus still the same. It, at least, was unchanged and there was some sense of continuity in the world.

  He smiled and turned, then turned again.
Was
there someone following him? The feeling was certainly strong enough. His worried gaze moved over the campus without seeing anything unusual. With an irritated shrug, he walked into the building.

  It was still the same too and it made him feel good to walk on the dark tile floors again, beneath the ceiling murals, up the marble steps, through the soundproof, air-cooled halls.

  He didn't notice the face of the student who walked by him even though their shoulders almost touched. He did seem to notice the student looking at him. But he wasn't sure and, when he looked over his shoulder, the student had turned a corner.

  The afternoon passed slowly He walked from building to building, entering each one religiously, looking at bulletin boards, glancing into classrooms and smiling carefully-timed smiles at everything.

  But he was beginning to feel a desire to run away. He resented the fact that no one spoke to him. He thought of going to the alumni director and chatting with him but he decided against it. He didn't want to seem pretentious. He was just an ex-student quietly visiting the scenes of his college days. That was all. No point in making a show of it.

  As he walked back to the room that evening after supper, he had the definite impression that someone was following him.

  Yet, whenever he stopped with a suspicious frown and looked back, there was nothing. Only the sound of cars honking down on Broadway or the laughter of young men up in their rooms.

  On the porch steps of the house he stopped and looked up the street, an uneasy chill running down his back. Probably perspired too much this afternoon, he thought. Now the cooling air was chilling him. After all, he wasn't as young as-

  He shook his head, trying to rid his mind of the phrase. A man's as young as he feels, he told himself authoritatively and nodded once curtly to impress the fact on his mind.

  The woman had left the front door unlocked. As he entered, he heard her talking on the telephone in Miss Smith's bedroom. Johnson nodded to himself. How many times had he spoken to Mary on that old phone? What was the number again? 4458.

  That was it. He smiled proudly at being able to remember it.

  How many times had he sat there in the old black rocker exchanging light conversation with her? His face fell. Where was she now? Was she married and did she have children? Did she-

  He stopped, tensing, as a floor board creaked behind him. He waited a moment, expecting to hear the woman's voice. Then he looked back quickly.

  The hallway was empty.

  With a swallow, he entered his room and shut the door firmly. He fumbled for the light switch and finally found it.

  He smiled again. This was more like it. He walked around his old room, running his hand over the top of the bureau, the student's desk, the mattress on the bed. He tossed down his hat and coat on the desk and settled down on the bed with a weary sigh. A grin lit his face as the old springs groaned. Same old springs, he thought.

  He threw up his legs and fell back on the pillow. God, but it felt good. He ran his fingers over the bedspread, stroking it affectionately.

  The house was very still. Johnson turned on his stomach and glanced out the window. There was the old alley, the big oak tree still towering over the house. He shook his head at the chest-filling sensation that thoughts of the past caused in him.

  Then he started as the door thudded slightly in its frame. He looked quickly over his shoulder.
It's the wind does it,
the woman's words came to him.

  He was certainly overwrought, he decided, but all these things were disturbing. Well, that was understandable. The day had been an emotional experience. To relive the past and regret the present was a full day's work for any man.

  He was drowsy after the heavy meal he'd eaten at the Black and Gold Inn. He pushed himself up and shuffled over to the light switch.

  The room plunged into darkness and he felt his way cautiously back to the bed. He lay down with a satisfied grunt.

  It was still a good old bed. How many nights had he slept there, his brain seething with the contents of books he'd been studying? He reached down and loosened his belt, pretending he didn't feel a twinge of remorse at the way his once slender body had thickened. He sighed as the pressure on his stomach was eased. Then he rolled on his side in the warm, airless room and closed his eyes.

  He lay there for a few minutes listening to the sound of a car passing in the street. Then he rolled onto his back with a groan. He stretched out his legs, let them go slack. Then he sat up and, reaching down, untied his shoes and dropped them on the floor. He fell back on the pillow and turned on his side again with a sigh.

  It came slowly.

  At first he thought it was his stomach bothering him. Then he realized it wasn't just his stomach muscles but every muscle in his body. He felt bands of ligament drawing in and a shudder ran through his frame.

  He opened his eyes and blinked in the darkness. What in God's name was wrong? He stared at the desk and saw the dark outline of his hat and coat. Again, he closed his eyes. He had to relax. There were some big customers coming up in Chicago.

  It's
cold,
he thought irritably, fumbling around at his side and finally drawing the bedspread over his stout body. He felt his skin crawling. He found himself listening but there was no other sound than the harshness of his own breathing. He twisted uncomfortably, wondering how the room could have gotten so cold all of a sudden. He must have gotten a chill.

  He rolled onto his back and opened his eyes.

  In an instant, his body stiffened and all sound was paralyzed in his throat.

  There, leaning over him, bare inches from him, was the whitest, the most hating face he had ever seen in his entire life.

  He lay there, staring up in numb, open-mouthed horror at the face.

"Get out,"
said the face, its grating voice hoarse with malevolence.
"Get out. You can't come back."

  For a long time after the face had disappeared, Johnson lay there, barely able to breathe, his hands in rigid knots at his sides, his eyes wide and staring. He kept trying to think but the memory of the face and the words spoken petrified his mind.

  He didn't stay. When strength had returned, he got up, and managed to sneak out without attracting the attention of the woman. He drove quickly from the town, his face pale, thinking only of what he'd seen.

Himself.

  The face of himself when he was in college. His young self hating this coarsened interloper for intruding on what could never be his again. And the young man in the Golden Campus; that had been his younger self. The student passing the Campus Cafe had been himself as he once was. And the student in the hallway and the resentful presence that had followed him around the campus, hating him for coming back and pawing at the past-they had all been him.

  He never went back and he never told anyone what had happened. And when, in rare moments, he spoke of his college days, it was always with a shrug and a cynical smile to show how little it had really meant to him.

16 - THE DISTRIBUTOR

July 20

  Time to move.

  He'd found a small, furnished house on Sylmar Street. The Saturday morning he moved in, he went around the neighbourhood introducing himself.

  "Good morning," he said to the old man pruning ivy next door. "My name is Theodore Gordon. I just moved in."

  The old man straightened up and shook Theodore's hand. "How do," he said. His name was Joseph Alston.