Ray Bradbury Stories, Volume 1 (90 page)

Terwilliger, scenting danger, lingered near the exit, not knowing why; his nervousness was compulsive and intuitive. Hand on the door, he watched.

Another gasp ran through the crowd.

Someone laughed quietly. A woman secretary giggled. Then there was instantaneous silence.

For Joe Clarence had jumped to his feet.

His tiny figure sliced across the light on the screen. For a moment, two images gesticulated in the dark: Tyrannosaurus, ripping the leg from a pteranodon, and Clarence, yelling, jumping forward as if to grapple with these fantastic wrestlers.

‘Stop! Freeze it right there!’

The film stopped. The image held.

‘What’s wrong?’ asked Mr Glass.

‘Wrong?’ Clarence crept up on the image. He thrust his baby hand to the screen, stabbed the tyrant jaw, the lizard eye, the fangs, the brow, then turned blindly to the projector light so that reptilian flesh was printed on his furious cheeks. ‘What goes? What
is
this?’

‘Only a monster, Chief.’

‘Monster, hell!’ Clarence pounded the screen with his tiny fist. ‘That’s
me
!’

Half the people leaned forward, half the people fell back, two people jumped up, one of them Mr Glass, who fumbled for his other spectacles, flexed his eyes and moaned, ‘So
that’s
where I saw him before!’

‘That’s where you what?’

Mr Glass shook his head, eyes shut. ‘That face, I
knew
it was familiar.’

A wind blew in the room.

Everyone turned. The door stood open.

Terwilliger was gone.

They found Terwilliger in his animation studio cleaning out his desk, dumping everything into a large cardboard box, the Tyrannosaurus machine-toy model under his arm. He looked up as the mob swirled in, Clarence at the head.

‘What did I do to deserve this!’ he cried.

‘I’m sorry, Mr Clarence.’

‘You’re sorry?! Didn’t I pay you well?’

‘No, as a matter of fact.’

‘I took you to lunches—’

‘Once. I picked up the tab.’

‘I gave you dinner at home, you swam in my pool, and now
this
! You’re fired!’

‘You can’t fire me. Mr Clarence. I’ve worked the last week free and overtime, you forgot my check—’

‘You’re fired anyway, oh, you’re
really
fired! You’re blackballed in Hollywood. Mr Glass!’ He whirled to find the old man. ‘Sue him!’

‘There is nothing,’ said Terwillinger, not looking up any more, just looking down, packing, keeping in motion, ‘nothing you can sue me for. Money? You never paid enough to save on. A house? Could never afford that. A wife? I’ve worked for people like you all my life. So wives are out. I’m an unencumbered man. There’s nothing you can do to me. If you attach my dinosaurs, I’ll just go hole up in a small town somewhere, get me a can of latex rubber, some clay from the river, some old steel pipe, and make new monsters. I’ll buy stock film raw and cheap. I’ve got an old beat-up stopmotion camera. Take that away, and I’ll build one with my own hands. I can do anything. And that’s why you’ll never hurt me again.’

‘You’re fired!’ cried Clarence. ‘Look at me. Don’t look away. You’re fired! You’re fired!’

‘Mr Clarence,’ said Mr Glass, quietly, edging forward. ‘Let me talk to him just a moment.’

‘So talk to him!’ said Clarence. ‘What’s the use? He just stands there with that monster under his arm and the goddam thing looks like me, so get out of the way!’

Clarence stormed out the door. The others followed.

Mr Glass shut the door, walked over to the window and looked out at the absolutely clear twilight sky.

‘I wish it would rain,’ he said. ‘That’s one thing about California I can’t forgive. It never really lets go and cries. Right now, what wouldn’t I give for a little something from that sky? A bolt of lightning, even.’

He stood silent, and Terwilliger slowed in his packing. Mr Glass sagged down into a chair and doodled on a pad with a pencil, talking sadly, half aloud, to himself.

‘Six reels of film shot, pretty good reels, half the film done, three hundred thousand dollars down the drain, hail and farewell. Out the window all the jobs. Who feeds the starving mouths of boys and girls? Who will face the stockholders? Who chucks the Bank of America under the chin? Anyone for Russian roulette?’

He turned to watch Terwilliger snap the locks on a briefcase.

‘What hath God wrought?’

Terwilliger, looking down at his hands, turning them over to examine their texture, said. ‘I didn’t know I was doing it, I swear. It came out in my fingers. It was all subconscious. My fingers do everything for me. They did
this
.’

‘Better the fingers had come in my office and taken me direct by the throat,’ said Glass. ‘I was never one for slow motion. The Keystone Kops, at triple speed, was my idea of living, or dying. To think a rubber monster has stepped on us all. We are now so much tomato mush, ripe for canning!’

‘Don’t make me feel any guiltier than I feel,’ said Terwilliger.

‘What do you want, I should take you dancing?’

‘It’s just,’ cried Terwilliger, ‘he kept at me. Do this. Do that. Do it the other way. Turn it inside out, upside down, he said. I swallowed my bile. I was angry all the time. Without knowing. I must’ve changed the face. But right up till five minutes ago, when Mr Clarence yelled, I didn’t see it. I’ll take all the blame.’

‘No,’ sighed Mr glass, ‘we should
all
have seen. Maybe we did and couldn’t admit. Maybe we did and laughed all night in our sleep, when we couldn’t hear. So where are we now? Mr Clarence, he’s got investments he can’t throw out. You got your career from this day forward, for better or worse, you can’t throw out. Mr Clarence right now is aching to be convinced it was all some horrible dream. Part of his ache, ninety-nine per cent, is in his wallet. If you could put one per cent of your time in the next hour convincing him of what I’m going to tell you next, tomorrow morning there will be no orphan children staring out of the want ads in
Variety
and
The Hollywood Reporter
. If you would go tell him—’

‘Tell me
what
?’

Joe Clarence, returned, stood in the door, his cheeks still inflamed.

‘What he just told me.’ Mr Glass turned calmly. ‘A touching story.’

‘I’m listening!’ said Clarence.

‘Mr Clarence.’ The old lawyer weighed his words carefully. ‘This film you just saw is Mr Terwilliger’s solemn and silent tribute to you.’

‘It’s
what
?’ shouted Clarence.

Both men, Clarence and Terwilliger, dropped their jaws.

The old lawyer gazed only at the wall and in a shy voice said, ‘Shall I go on?’

The animator closed his jaw. ‘If you want to.’

‘This film’—the lawyer arose and pointed in a single motion toward the projection room—‘was done from a feeling of honor and friendship for you. Joe Clarence. Behind your desk, an unsung hero of the motion picture industry, unknown, unseen, you sweat out your lonely little life while who gets the glory? The stars. How often does a man in Atawanda Springs, Idaho, tell his wife. “Say, I was thinking the other night about Joe Clarence—a great producer, that man”? How often? Should I tell? Never! So Terwilliger brooded. How could he present the real Clarence to the world? The dinosaur is there; boom! it hits him! This is it! he thought, the very thing to strike terror to the world, here’s a lonely, proud, wonderful, awful symbol of independence, power, strength, shrewd animal cunning, the true democrat, the individual brought to its peak, all thunder and big lightning. Dinosaur: Joe Clarence. Joe Clarence: Dinosaur. Man embodied in Tyrant Lizard!’

Mr Glass sat down, panting quietly.

Terwilliger said nothing.

Clarence moved at last, walked across the room, circled Glass slowly, then came to stand in front of Terwilliger, his face pale. His eyes were uneasy, shifting up along Terwilliger’s tall skeleton frame.

‘You said
that
?’ he asked faintly.

Terwilliger swallowed.

‘To me he said it. He’s shy,’ said Mr Glass. ‘You ever hear him say much, ever talk back? swear? anything? He likes people, he can’t say. But, immortalize them? That he can do!’

‘Immortalize?’ said Clarence.

‘What else?’ said the old man. ‘Like a statue, only moving. Years from now people will say, “Remember that film,
The Monster from the Pleistocene
?” And people will say, “Sure! why?” “Because,” the others say, “it was the one monster, the one brute, in all Hollywood history had real guts, real personality. And why is this? Because one genius had enough imagination to base the creature on a real-life, hard-hitting, fast-thinking businessman of A-one caliber.” You’re one with history, Mr Clarence. Film libraries will carry you in good supply. Cinema societies will ask for you. How lucky can you get? Nothing like this will ever happen to Immanuel Glass, a lawyer. Every day for the next two hundred, five hundred years, you’ll be starring somewhere in the world!’

‘
Every
day?’ asked Clarence softly. ‘For the next—’

‘Eight hundred, even; why not?’

‘I never thought of that.’

‘Think of it!’

Clarence walked over to the window and looked out at the Hollywood Hills, and nodded at last.

‘My God, Terwilliger,’ he said. ‘You really like me
that
much?’

‘It’s hard to put in words,’ said Terwilliger, with difficulty.

‘So do we finish the mighty spectacle?’ asked Glass. ‘Starring the tyrant terror striding the earth and making all quake before him, none other than Mr Joseph J. Clarence?’

‘Yeah. Sure.’ Clarence wandered off, stunned, to the door, where he said, ‘You know? I always
wanted
to be an actor!’

Then he went quietly out into the hall and shut the door.

Terwilliger and Glass collided at the desk, both clawing at a drawer.

‘Age before beauty,’ said the lawyer, and quickly pulled forth a bottle of whiskey.

At midnight on the night of the first preview of
Monster from the Stone Age
, Mr Glass came back to the studio, where everyone was gathering for a celebration, and found Terwilliger seated alone in his office, his dinosaur on his lap.

‘You weren’t
there
?’ asked Mr Glass.

‘I couldn’t face it. Was there a riot?’

‘A riot? The preview cards are all superdandy extra plus! A lovelier monster nobody saw before! So now we’re talking sequels! Joe Clarence as the Tyrant Lizard in
Return of the Stone-Age Monster
, Joe Clarence and/or Tyrannosaurus Rex in, maybe,
Beast from the Old Country
—’

The phone rang. Terwilliger got it.

‘Terwilliger, this is Clarence! Be there in five minutes! We’ve done it! Your animal! Great! Is he mine now? I mean, to hell with the contract, as a favor, can I have him for the mantel?’

‘Mr Clarence, the monster’s yours.’

‘Better than an Oscar! So long!’

Terwilliger stared at the dead phone.

‘God bless us all, said Tiny Tim. He’s laughing, almost hysterical with relief.’

‘So maybe I know why,’ said Mr Glass. ‘A little girl, after the preview, asked him for an autograph.’

‘An
autograph
?’

‘Right there in the street. Made him sign. First autograph he ever gave in his life. He laughed all the while he wrote his name. Somebody knew him. There he was, in front of the theater, big as life. Rex Himself, so sign the name. So he did.’

‘Wait a minute,’ said Terwilliger slowly, pouring drinks. ‘That little girl…?’

‘My youngest daughter,’ said Glass. ‘So who knows? And who will tell?’

They drank.

‘Not me,’ said Terwilliger.

Then, carrying the rubber dinosaur between them, and bringing the whiskey, they went to stand by the studio gate, waiting for the limousines to arrive all lights, horns and annunciations.

My name is Margaret Leary and I’m ten years old and in the fifth grade at Central School. I haven’t any brothers or sisters, but I’ve got a nice father and mother except they don’t pay much attention to me. And anyway, we never thought we’d have anything to do with a murdered woman. Or almost, anyway.

When you’re just living on a street like we live on, you don’t think awful things are going to happen, like shooting or stabbing or burying people under the ground, practically in your back yard. And when it does happen you don’t believe it. You just go on buttering your toast or baking a cake.

I got to tell you how it happened. It was a noon in the middle of July. It was hot and Mama said to me, ‘Margaret, you go to the store and buy some ice cream. It’s Saturday, Dad’s home for lunch, so we’ll have a treat.’

I ran out across the empty lot behind our house. It was a big lot, where kids had played baseball, and broken glass and stuff. And on my way back from the store with the ice cream I was just walking along, minding my own business, when all of a sudden it happened.

I heard the Screaming Woman.

I stopped and listened.

It was coming up out of the ground.

A woman was buried under the rocks and dirt and glass, and she was screaming, all wild and horrible, for someone to dig her out.

I just stood there, afraid. She kept screaming, muffled.

Then I started to run. I fell down, got up, and ran some more. I got in the screen door of my house and there was Mama, calm as you please, not knowing what I knew, that there was a real live woman buried out in back of our house, just a hundred yards away, screaming bloody murder.

‘Mama,’ I said.

‘Don’t stand there with the ice cream,’ said Mama.

‘But, Mama,’ I said.

‘Put it in the icebox,’ she said.

‘Listen, Mama, there’s a Screaming Woman in the empty lot.’

‘And wash your hands,’ said Mama.

‘She was screaming and screaming…’

‘Let’s see, now, salt and pepper,’ said Mama, far away.

‘Listen to me,’ I said, loud. ‘We got to dig her out. She’s buried under tons and tons of dirt and if we don’t dig her out, she’ll choke up and die.’

‘I’m certain she can wait until after lunch,’ said Mama.

‘Mama, don’t you believe me?’

‘Of course, dear. Now wash your hands and take this plate of meat in to your father.’

‘I don’t even know who she is or how she got there,’ I said. ‘But we got to help her before it’s too late.’

‘Good gosh,’ said Mama. ‘Look at this ice cream. ‘What did you do, just stand in the sun and let it melt?’

‘Well, the empty lot…’

‘Go on, now, scoot.’

I went into the dining room.

‘Hi, Dad, there’s a Screaming Woman in the empty lot.’

‘I never knew a woman who didn’t,’ said Dad.

‘I’m serious,’ I said.

‘You look very grave,’ said Father.

‘We’ve got to get picks and shovels and excavate, like for an Egyptian mummy,’ I said.

‘I don’t feel like an archaeologist, Margaret,’ said Father. ‘Now, some nice cool October day, I’ll take you up on that.’

‘But we can’t wait that long,’ I almost screamed. My heart was bursting in me. I was excited and scared and afraid and here was Dad, putting meat on his plate, cutting and chewing and paying me no attention.

‘Dad?’ I said.

‘Mmmm?’ he said, chewing.

‘Dad, you just gotta come out after lunch and help me,’ I said. ‘Dad, Dad, I’ll give you all the money in my piggy bank!’

‘Well,’ said Dad. ‘So it’s a business proposition, is it? It must be important for you to offer your perfectly good money. How much money will you pay, by the hour?’

‘I got five whole dollars it took me a year to save, and it’s all yours.’

Dad touched my arm. ‘I’m touched. I’m really touched. You want me to play with you and you’re willing to pay for my time. Honest, Margaret, you make your old Dad feel like a piker. I don’t give you enough time. Tell you what, after lunch, I’ll come out and listen to your Screaming Woman, free of charge.’

‘Will you, oh, will you, really?’

‘Yes, ma’am, that’s what I’ll do,’ said Dad. ‘But you must promise me one thing?’

‘What?’

‘If I come out, you must eat all of your lunch first.’

‘I promise,’ I said.

‘Okay.’

Mother came in and sat down and we started to eat.

‘Not so fast,’ said Mama.

I slowed down. Then I started eating fast again.

‘You heard your mother,’ said Dad.

‘The Screaming Woman,’ I said. ‘We got to hurry.’

‘I,’ said Father, ‘intend sitting here quietly and judiciously giving my attention first to my steak, then to my potatoes, and my salad, of course, and then to my ice cream, and after that to a long drink of iced coffee, if you don’t mind. I may be a good hour at it. And another thing, young lady, if you mention her name, this Screaming Whatsis, once more at this table during lunch, I won’t go out with you to hear her recital.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Is that understood?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

Lunch was a million years long. Everybody moved in slow motion, like those films you see at the movies. Mama got up slow and got down slow and forks and knives and spoons moved slow. Even the flies in the room were slow. And Dad’s cheek muscles moved slow. It was so slow. I wanted to scream, ‘Hurry! Oh, please, rush, get up, run around, come on out, run!’

But no, I had to sit, and all the while we sat there slowly, slowly eating our lunch, out there in the empty lot (I could hear her screaming in my mind.
Scream!
) was the Screaming Woman, all alone, while the world ate its lunch and the sun was hot and the lot was empty as the sky.

‘There we are,’ said Dad, finished at last.

‘Now will you come out to see the Screaming Woman?’ I said.

‘First a little more iced coffee,’ said Dad.

‘Speaking of Screaming Women,’ said Mother, ‘Charlie Nesbitt and his wife Helen had another fight last night.’

‘That’s nothing new,’ said Father. ‘They’re always fighting.’

‘If you ask me, Charlie’s no good,’ said Mother. ‘Or her, either.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Dad. ‘I think she’s pretty nice.’

‘You’re prejudiced. After all, you almost married her.’

‘You going to bring that up again?’ he said. ‘After all, I was only engaged to her six weeks.’

‘You showed some sense when you broke it off.’

‘Oh, you know Helen. Always stagestruck. Wanted to travel in a trunk.
I just couldn’t see it. That broke it up. She was sweet, though. Sweet and kind.’

‘What did it get her? A terrible brute of a husband like Charlie.’

‘Dad,’ I said.

‘I’ll give you that. Charlie has got a terrible temper,’ said Dad. ‘Remember when Helen had the lead in our high school graduation play? Pretty as a picture. She wrote some songs for it herself. That was the summer she wrote that song for me.’

‘Ha,’ said Mother.

‘Don’t laugh. It was a good song.’

‘You never told me about that song.’

‘It was between Helen and me. Let’s see, how
did
it go?’

‘Dad,’ I said.

‘You’d better take your daughter out in the back lot,’ said Mother, ‘before she collapses. You can sing me that wonderful song later.’

‘Okay, come on, you,’ said Dad, and I ran him out of the house.

The empty lot was still empty and hot and the glass sparkled green and white and brown all around where the bottles lay.

‘Now, where’s this Screaming Woman?’ laughed Dad.

‘We forgot the shovels,’ I cried.

‘We’ll get them later, after we hear the soloist,’ said Dad.

I took him over to the spot, ‘Listen,’ I said.

We listened.

‘I don’t hear anything,’ said Dad, at last.

‘Shh,’ I said. ‘Wait.’

We listened some more. ‘Hey, there, Screaming Woman!’ I cried.

We heard the sun in the sky. We heard the wind in the trees, real quiet. We heard a bus, far away, running along. We heard a car pass.

That was all.

‘Margaret,’ said Father. ‘I suggest you go lie down and put a damp cloth on your forehead.’

‘But she was here.’ I shouted. ‘I heard her, screaming and screaming and screaming. See, here’s where the ground’s been dug up.’ I called frantically at the earth. ‘Hey there, you down there!’

‘Margaret,’ said Father. ‘This is the place where Mr Kelly dug yesterday, a big hole, to bury his trash and garbage in.’

‘But during the night,’ I said, ‘someone else used Mr Kelly’s burying place to bury a woman. And covered it all over again.’

‘Well, I’m going back in and take a cool shower,’ said Dad.

‘You won’t help me dig?’

‘Better not stay out here too long,’ said Dad. ‘It’s hot.’

Dad walked off. I heard the back door slam.

I stamped on the ground. ‘Darn,’ I said.

The screaming started again.

She screamed and screamed. Maybe she had been tired and was resting and now she began it all over, just for me.

I stood in the empty lot in the hot sun and I felt like crying. I ran back to the house and banged the door.

‘Dad, she’s screaming again!’

‘Sure, sure,’ said Dad. ‘Come on.’ And he led me to my upstairs bedroom. ‘Here,’ he said. He made me lie down and put a cold rag on my head. ‘Just take it easy.’

I began to cry. ‘Oh, Dad, we can’t let her die. She’s all buried, like that person in that story by Edgar Allan Poe, and think how awful it is to be screaming and no one paying any attention.’

‘I forbid you to leave the house,’ said Dad, worried. ‘You just lie there the rest of the afternoon.’ He went out and locked the door. I heard him and Mother talking in the front room. After a while I stopped crying. I got up and tiptoed to the window. My room was upstairs. It seemed high.

I took a sheet off the bed and tied it to the bedpost and let it out the window. Then I climbed out the window and shinnied down until I touched the ground. Then I ran to the garage, quiet, and I got a couple of shovels and I ran to the empty lot. It was hotter than ever. And I started to dig, and all the while I dug, the Screaming Woman screamed…

It was hard work. Shoving in the shovel and lifting the rocks and glass. And I knew I’d be doing it all afternoon and maybe I wouldn’t finish in time. What could I do? Run tell other people? But they’d be like Mom and Dad, pay no attention. I just kept digging, all by myself.

About ten minutes later, Dippy Smith came along the path through the empty lot. He’s my age and goes to my school.

‘Hi, Margaret,’ he said.

‘Hi, Dippy,’ I gasped.

‘What you doing?’ he asked.

‘Digging.’

‘For what?’

‘I got a Screaming Lady in the ground and I’m digging for her,’ I said.

‘I don’t hear no screaming,’ said Dippy.

‘You sit down and wait awhile and you’ll hear her scream yet. Or better still, help me dig.’

‘I don’t dig unless I hear a scream,’ he said.

We waited.

‘Listen!’ I cried. ‘Did you
hear
it?’

‘Hey,’ said Dippy, with slow appreciation, his eyes gleaming. ‘That’s okay. Do it again.’

‘Do what again?’

‘The scream.’

‘We got to wait,’ I said, puzzled.

‘Do it again,’ he insisted, shaking my arm. ‘Go on.’ He dug in his pocket for a brown aggie. ‘Here.’ He shoved it at me. ‘I’ll give you this marble if you do it again.’

A scream came out of the ground.

‘Hot dog!’ said Dippy. ‘Teach
me
to do it!’ He danced around as if I was a miracle.

‘I don’t…’ I started to say.

‘Did you get the
Throw-Your-Voice
book for a dime from that Magic Company in Dallas. Texas?’ cried Dippy. ‘You got one of those tin ventriloquist contraptions in your mouth?’

‘Y-yes,’ I lied, for I wanted him to help. ‘If you’ll help dig, I’ll tell you about it later.’

‘Swell,’ he said. ‘Give me a shovel.’

We both dug together, and from time to time the woman screamed.

‘Boy,’ said Dippy. ‘You’d think she was right under foot. You’re wonderful. Maggie.’ Then he said. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Who?’

‘The Screaming Woman. You must have a name for her.’

‘Oh, sure.’ I thought a moment. ‘Her name’s Wilma Schweiger and she’s a rich old woman, ninety-six years old, and she was buried by a man named Spike, who counterfeited ten-dollar bills.’

‘Yes,
sir
,’ said Dippy.

‘And there’s hidden treasure buried with her, and I. I’m a grave robber come to dig her out and get it,’ I gasped, digging excitedly.

Dippy made his eyes Oriental and mysterious. ‘Can I be a grave robber, too?’ He had a better idea. ‘Let’s pretend it’s the Princess Ommanatra, an Egyptian queen, covered with diamonds!’

We kept digging and I thought. Oh, we will rescue her, we
will
. If only we keep on!

‘Hey, I just got an idea,’ said Dippy. And he ran off and got a piece of cardboard. He scribbled on it with crayon.

‘Keep digging!’ I said. ‘We can’t stop!’

‘I’m making a sign. See? SLUMBERLAND CEMETERY! We can bury some birds and beetles here, in matchboxes and stuff. I’ll go find some butterflies.’

‘No, Dippy!’

‘It’s more fun that way. I’ll get me a dead cat, too, maybe…’

‘Dippy, use your shovel! Please!’

‘Aw,’ said Dippy. ‘I’m tired. I think I’ll go home and take a nap.’

‘You can’t do that.’

‘Who says so?’

‘Dippy, there’s something I want to tell you.’

‘What?’

He gave the shovel a kick.

I whispered in his ear. ‘There’s really a woman buried here.’

‘Why sure there is,’ he said. ‘You said it, Maggie.’

‘You don’t believe me, either.’

‘Tell me how you throw your voice and I’ll keep on digging.’

‘But I can’t tell you, because I’m not doing it.’ I said, ‘Look, Dippy. I’ll stand way over here and you listen there.’

The Screaming Woman screamed again.

‘Hey!’ said Dippy. ‘There really
is
a woman here!’

‘That’s what I tried to say.’

‘Let’s dig!’ said Dippy.

We dug for twenty minutes.

‘I wonder who she is?’