Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories (33 page)

  Into the out box.

August 23

  "Mrs. Ferrel!"

  She shuddered on the bar stool. "Why, Mister-"

  "Gordon," he provided, smiling. "How nice to see you again."

  "Yes." She pressed together lips that trembled.

  "You come here often?" Theodore asked.

  "Oh, no,
never''
Inez Ferrel blurted. "I'm-just supposed to meet a friend here tonight. A
girl
friend."

  "Oh, I see," said Theodore. "Well, may a lonely widower keep you company until she comes?"

  "Why…" Mrs. Ferrel shrugged. "I guess." Her lips were painted brightly red against the alabaster of her skin. The sweater clung adhesively to the hoisted jut of her breasts.

  After a while, when Mrs. Ferrel's friend didn't show up, they slid into a darkened booth. There, Theodore used Mrs. Ferrel's powder room retreat to slip a pale and tasteless powder in her drink. On her return she swallowed this and, in minutes, grew stupefied. She smiled at Theodore.

"I
like you Misser Gor'n," she confessed. The words crawled viscidly across her lolling tongue.

  Shortly thereafter, he led her, stumbling and giggling, to his car and drove her to a motel. Inside the room, he helped her strip to stockings, garter belt and shoes and, while she posed with drugged complacency, Theodore took flashbulb pictures.

  After she'd collapsed at two a.m. Theodore dressed her and drove her home. He stretched her fully dressed across her bed. After that he went outside and poured concentrated weed killer on Alston's replanted ivy.

  Back in the house he dialled the Jefferson's number.

  "Yes," said Arthur Jefferson irritably.

"Get out of this neighbourhood or you'll be sorry,"
whispered Theodore, then hung up.

  In the morning he walked to Mrs. Ferrel's house and rang the bell.

  "Hello," he said politely. "Are you feeling better?"

  She stared at him blankly while he explained how she'd gotten violently ill the night before and he'd taken her home from the bar. "I do hope you're feeling better," he concluded.

  "Yes," she said, confusedly, "I'm-all right."

  As he left her house he saw a red-faced James McCann approaching the Morton house, an envelope in his hand. Beside him walked a distraught Mrs. McCann.

  "We must be
tolerant,
Jim," Theodore heard her say.

August 31

  At two-fifteen a.m. Theodore took the brush and the can of paint and went outside.

  Walking to the Jefferson house he set the can down and painted, jaggedly, across the door-nigger!

  Then he moved across the street allowing an occasional drip of paint. He left the can under Henry Putnam's back porch, accidentally upsetting the dog's plate. Fortunately, the Putnams' dog slept indoors.

  Later, he put more weed killer on Joseph Alston's ivy.

  In the morning, when Donald Gorse had gone to work, he took a heavy envelope and went to see Eleanor Gorse. "Look at this," he said, sliding a pornographic booklet from the envelope. "I received this in the mail today.
Look
at it." He thrust it into her hands.

  She held the booklet as if it were a spider.

  "Isn't it hideous?" he said.

  She made a face.
"Revolting,"
she said.

  "I thought I'd check with you and several others before I phoned the police," said Theodore. "Have you received any of this filth?"

  Eleanor Gorse bristled. "Why should I receive them?" she demanded.

  Outside, Theodore found the old man squatting by his ivy. "How are they coming?" he asked.

  "They're dyin'."

  Theodore looked stricken. "How can this be?" he asked.

  Alston shook his head.

  "Oh, this is
horrible."
Theodore turned away, clucking. As he walked to his house he saw, up the street, Arthur Jefferson cleaning off his door and, across the way, Henry Putnam watching carefully.

  She was waiting on his porch.

  "Mrs. McCann," said Theodore, surprised, "I'm so glad to see you."

  "What I came to say may not make you so glad," she said unhappily.

  "Oh?" said Theodore. They went into his house.

  "There have been a lot of…
things
happening in this neighbourhood since you moved in," said Mrs. McCann after they were seated in the living room.

  "Things?" asked Theodore.

  "I think you know what I mean," said Mrs. McCann. "However, this-this
bigotry
on Mr. Jefferson's door is too much, Mr. Gordon, too much."

  Theodore gestured helplessly. "I don't understand."

  "Please don't make it difficult," she said. "I may have to call the authorities if these things don't stop, Mr. Gordon. I hate to think of doing such a thing but-"

"Authorities?"
Theodore looked terrified.

  "None of these things happened until you moved in, Mr. Gordon," she said. "Believe me, I hate what I'm saying but I simply have no choice. The fact that none of these things has happened to you-"

  She broke off startledly as a sob wracked Theodore's chest. She stared at him. "Mr. Gordon-" she began uncertainly.

  "I don't know what these things are you speak of," said Theodore in a shaking voice, "but I'd
kill
myself before I harmed another, Mrs. McCann."

  He looked around as if to make sure they were alone.

  "I'm going to tell you something I've never told a single soul," he said. He wiped away a tear. "My name isn't Gordon," he said. "It's Gottlieb. I'm a Jew. I spent a year at Dachau."

  Mrs. McCann's lips moved but she said nothing. Her face was getting red.

  "I came from there a broken man," said Theodore. "I haven't long to live, Mrs. McCann. My wife is dead, my three children are dead. I'm all alone. I only want to live in peace-in a little place like this-among people like you.

  "To be a neighbour, a friend…"

  "Mr.-
Gottlieb"
she said brokenly.

  After she was gone, Theodore stood silent in the living room, hands clenched whitely at his sides. Then he went into the kitchen to discipline himself.

  "Good morning, Mrs. Backus," he said an hour later when the little woman answered the door, "I wonder if I might ask you some questions about our church?"

  "Oh. Oh, yes." She stepped back feebly. "Won't you- come in?"

  "I'll be very still so as not to wake your husband," Theodore whispered. He saw her looking at his bandaged hand. "I burned myself," he said. "Now, about the church. Oh, there's someone knocking at your back door."

  "There is?"

  When she'd gone into the kitchen, Theodore pulled open the hall closet door and dropped some photographs behind a pile of overshoes and garden tools. The door was shut when she returned.

  "There wasn't anyone," she said.

  "I could have sworn…" He smiled deprecatingly. He looked down at a circular bag on the floor. "Oh, does Mr. Backus bowl?"

  "Wednesdays and Fridays when his shift is over," she said. "There's an all-night alley over on Western Avenue."

  "I love to bowl," said Theodore.

  He asked his questions about the church, then left. As he started down the path he heard loud voices from the Morton house.

  "It wasn't bad enough about Katherine McCann and
those
awful pictures," shrieked Mrs. Morton. "Now this…
.filth!"

  "But, Mom!" cried Walter, Jr.

September 14

  Theodore awoke and turned the radio off. Standing, he put a small bottle of greyish powder in his pocket and slipped from the house. Reaching his destination, he sprinkled powder into the water bowl and stirred it with a finger until it dissolved.

  Back in the house he scrawled four letters reading:
Arthur Jefferson is trying to pass the colour line. He is my cousin and should admit he is black like the rest of us. I am doing this for his own good.

  He signed the letter
John Thomas Jefferson
and addressed three of the envelopes to Donald Gorse, the Mortons, and Mr. Henry Putnam.

  This completed, he saw Mrs. Backus walking toward the boulevard and followed. "May I walk you?" he asked.

  "Oh," she said. "All right."

  "I missed your husband last night," he told her.

  She glanced at him.

  "I thought I'd join him bowling," Theodore said, "but I guess he was sick again."

  "Sick?"

  "I asked the man behind the counter at the alley and he said that Mr. Backus hadn't been coming in because he was sick."

  "Oh," Mrs. Backus's voice was thinly stricken.

  "Well, maybe next Friday," said Theodore.

  Later, when he came back, he saw a panel truck in front of Henry Putnam's house. A man came out of the alley carrying a blanket-wrapped body which he laid in the truck. The Putnam boys were crying as they watched.

  Arthur Jefferson answered the door. Theodore showed the letter to Jefferson and his wife. "It came this morning," he said.

  "This is
monstrous!"
said Jefferson, reading it.

  "Of
course
it is," said Theodore.

  While they were talking, Jefferson looked through the window at the Putnam house across the street.

September 15

  Pale morning mist engulfed Sylmar Street. Theodore moved through it silently. Under the back porch of the Jeffersons' house he set fire to a box of damp papers. As it began to smoulder he walked across the yard and, with a single knife stroke, slashed apart the rubber pool. He heard it pulsing water on the grass as he left. In the alley he dropped a book of matches that read
Putnam's Wines and Liquors.

  A little after six that morning he woke to the howl of sirens and felt the small house tremble at the heavy trucks passing by. Turning on his side, he yawned, and mumbled, "Goody."

September 17

  It was a paste-complexioned Dorothy Backus who answered Theodore's knock.

  "May I drive you to church?" asked Theodore.

  "I-I don't believe I-I'm not… feeling too well," stumbled Mrs. Backus.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," Theodore said. He saw the edges of some photographs protruding from her apron pocket.

  As he left he saw the Mortons getting in their car, Bianca wordless, both Walters ill at ease. Up the street, a police car was parked in front of Arthur Jefferson's house.

  Theodore went to church with Donald Gorse who said that Eleanor was feeling ill.

  "I'm so sorry," Theodore said.

  That afternoon, he spent a while at the Jefferson house helping clear away the charred debris of their back porch. When he saw the slashed rubber pool he drove immediately to a drug store and bought another one.

  "But they love that pool," said Theodore, when Patty Jefferson protested. "You told me so yourself."

  He winked at Arthur Jefferson but Jefferson was not communicative that afternoon.

September 23

  Early in the evening Theodore saw Alston's dog walking in the street. He got his BB gun and, from the bedroom window, soundlessly, fired. The dog nipped fiercely at its side and spun around. Then, whimpering, it started home.

  Several minutes later, Theodore went outside and started pulling up the door to the garage. He saw the old man hurrying down his alley, the dog in his arms.

  "What's wrong?" asked Theodore.

  "Don't know," said Alston in a breathless, frightened voice. "He's hurt."

  "Quickly!" said Theodore. "Into my car!"

  He rushed Alston and the dog to the nearest veterinary, passing three stop signs and groaning when the old man held his hand up, palsiedly, and whimpered,
"Blood!"

  For three hours Theodore sat in the veterinary's waiting room until the old man staggered forth, his face a greyish white.

"No,"
said Theodore, jumping to his feet.

  He led the old man, weeping, to the car and drove him home. There, Alston said he'd rather be alone so Theodore left. Shortly afterward, the black and white police car rolled to a stop in front of Alston's house and the old man led the two officers past Theodore's house.