personal items in a small kit and went outside to wait. The tronicar
driver was supposed to stop and touch her signal chime, but she was
taking no chances. She waited nearly an hour, afraid the car might come
early. When it finally swung into view down the street, she hurried to
the ramp.
After the tronicar had picked up its cargo of State wards and left the
immediate prefab area, the driver began an oral travelogue, describing
new buildings, sites and developments as the car sped past. She
scarcely heard his monotonous speel droning over the speaker system.
Her plans were made. When the car stopped in Newbridge, she would get
off on some pretext and simply keep on going. She knew the tronicar
excursions were tied to a rigid schedule. The driver would not wait for
her very long.
Assuring him that she would return in five minutes, she got out in
Newbridge and scurried away in the crowds. Once out of sight, she
signaled for a cruisecab.
As the cab slid smoothly through city traffic toward the highway which
skirted the dump, horrible doubts assailed her. Suppose Ralph had
left? Suppose all of them had left? What would she do? Where could
she go? The State owned the house. She did not possess any money. She
would have to go back to the prefab, back to the trugrass lawn and the
simulated maple tree, back to--_Death_. Once she had spoken it in her
mind, she kept on repeating it. Death, death, death. She would have to
go back to death. She would have to go back to death.
It became a refrain, ringing in her head. The crisp voice of the driver
came through the partition tube, startling her. "This is the refuse
area, lady. Where did you want to go?"
Her heart began to pound. She looked out the window, searching for
landmarks. "About a mile yet. There's an old empty warehouse and then
some catalpa trees. Right after that."
In a minute or two the cruisecab glided to a stop. She paid the driver
and got out. Her heart was pounding so hard she could scarcely breathe.
"You want me to wait, lady?" The driver regarded her quizzically.
She shook her head. "No--no thanks. I--I'm meeting someone here."
The driver glanced at the smoky pall of the dump and shrugged. Seconds
later the cruisecab was disappearing down the highway.
She walked past the clump of catalpa trees bordering the highway. There
were bushes and then set back a bit would be the house. She stopped,
staring, motionless. The house was gone. The State had torn it down and
filled in the cellar hole.
As she looked across the littered back yard toward the clump of
cattails, she experienced a strange sense of unreality. Sea gulls cried
overhead and the sun filtered down through a pall of smoke, but the
familiar scene seemed eerily unfamiliar.
Scowling, she closed her eyes momentarily and forced down the panic
crowding within her. The house was gone; that was what made everything
seem so strange, so unreal. Now she would take the little path that led
across the back yard into the cattails. She would find Ralph and the
others. Surely they were here somewhere. They would have shelter, at
least a substitute for a house. She was acting like a fool. She should
have expected the house to be gone; even if it hadn't been, it was no
longer hers. She would have no right to enter it, if it were still
standing.
Crossing the yard, she hesitated at the edge of the cattails. She
imagined she could hear rats squeaking somewhere in the tangle ahead.
Finally she picked up a heavy stick, took a deep breath and stepped
into the narrow path which twisted through the cattail marsh.
She had thought the marsh covered only a small area; now she became
appalled at its size. The path twisted on and on, like some kind of
maze laid out to confuse the unwary. Every few yards her feet got
wet. At length she had to stop and sit down. There were squeaks and
twitterings around her. The eternal sea gulls flapped overhead. Smoke
drifted sluggishly skyward. She arose and went on.
Noon found her sitting at the base of a great mound of ashes and trash.
The sea gulls still squawked and the sun glared down. The cattail marsh
lay far away. She was tired, confused and fearful. The dump area seemed
enormous and she had not met a single human being. She had believed,
previously, that the dump was mostly a level plateau; now she found to
her dismay that it actually consisted of a great many mounds, gullies,
ridges and pits. Unless she climbed to the top of a mound, she could
not see very far. And even then she could not see down into distant
holes and depressions.
She had called out until her voice broke. Now she sat silently. A huge
grey-brown rat scurried into sight. Her hand tightened on the stick
which she carried. The rat pretended it was nibbling on a paper shred
but she knew it was watching her. It did not dart away.
She had a sudden horrible thought of night closing in, of rats by the
dozen, by the hundreds, watching her, waiting....
She arose so abruptly the rat took alarm and disappeared. She would
have to get out, she told herself. She would return to the marsh, take
the little path and go back to the highway. Once there, she would be
relatively safe.
But she soon found that she was hopelessly lost. The cattail marsh had
vanished. She trudged on with growing apprehension, encountering bigger
mounds and deeper gullies. The blazing sun seemed reflected back from
every inch of the scorched sour earth. Her head began to ache; she
developed a raging, tormenting thirst.
Rats watched her warily. Once a sea gull swung down, surveyed her with
its cruel eyes and flapped off silently.
Finally her legs simply gave out. She collapsed weeping. Ralph had
gone; they had all gone. She was now convinced that she was alone in
the dump. Surely, by now, someone would have seen her, heard her. They
had all left; perhaps the State had driven them out.
Shadows were beginning to slant across the gullies by the time she got
up. She was dry-eyed, but her legs ached, her eyes smarted and her
throat was so parched she could scarcely swallow. When she tried to
call out, her voice was only a whisper. Her first terror had passed.
Now she felt a kind of calm despair.
Rounding a huge bank of calcified waste, she stopped, frozen. She was
feverish, she concluded, dying maybe, for there scant yards away was a
group of people, a shack of some sort, a cleared area which was like
a little island of orderliness in an ocean of congealed chaos. She
stared, unbelieving.
Someone saw her, exclaimed, and the whole group turned to stare at her.
"_Lucy!_"
It was Ralph. He broke from the group, bolted toward her. "Lucy! Lucy!
How did you--What on earth--" She was in his arms then and he was
laughing and she was crying. She was too exhausted and too thirsty
to talk. She simply fell into his arms and he carried her toward the
shack. The others crowded around, murmuring sympathetically.
Ralph settled her into a big broken-down armchair under the tin roof.
Someone else held out a dipper of cool water, the sweetest water she
had ever tasted in her life. Mrs. Morgee appeared with a wet cloth and
began bathing her forehead and face. Someone took off her shoes.
In a few minutes she felt so much better, she sat up and looked around
at them. Ralph hovered at her side, grinning idiotically. The rest of
them only smiled at her, understanding that she did not yet wish to
answer questions.
As darkness closed in, someone lit a fire. In a few minutes the
aroma of mulligan stew spiced the air. Lucy's mouth watered; she was
ravenous, she now realized.
After she had finished a huge bowl of stew, she could scarcely keep her
eyes open. Mrs. Morgee led her inside to a cot, helped her undress and
got her into bed. Ralph remained outside with the others, around the
fire. Explanations could wait until morning.
She had the sensation of melting without effort into a deep, dreamless
sleep. She had made up her mind. She would never return to the plastic
prefab, the trugrass lawn, the simulated maple tree and the food
capsules. She wouldn't be carried away, all alone some morning, in a
plastic bag.
She'd never get used to the rats and she didn't like the smoke and the
sea gulls, but now she knew there were worse things.
At least she felt alive.
THE TENANTS
That January Madge and I were in desperate need of a rent. Two days
before we were due to be evicted--for owner occupancy--we heard about
the house in suburban Clarisville.
We got out there as fast as we could, made inquiries and located the
woman who owned the house, a Mrs. Dallis, who agreed to show us the
property.
The house was an ordinary-looking, white frame, two-story structure
located at the far end of a rather sparsely settled street. It needed
paint, new wallpaper and several new window panes. A porch step was
dangerously cracked and the entire grounds surrounding the house needed
a thorough going-over. Also, we would have to sign a two-year lease.
But of course we took it. It was much better than a tent in somebody's
back lot.
When we mentioned the eviction hanging over our heads, Mrs. Dallis
permitted us to move in immediately. And so it happened that our
furniture was already in the house before we actually signed the lease.
A few days later we drove over to Mrs. Dallis' place in Clarisville
Center to affix our signatures. She invited us in and was most cordial,
but after some preliminary pleasantries there came a slight pause and
Mrs. Dallis said, "There is just one thing--"
Our hearts skipped a beat. All along, while rejoicing at our good luck,
we had both wondered if there might be some hidden "catch" to the
business.
After mentioning the "one thing", Mrs. Dallis sat rather nervously
twiddling her fingers. To Madge and I, already on edge, this was
anything but reassuring.
Finally our new landlady found her tongue.
"Well," she said, "I won't conceal anything. Some years ago a certain
Mrs. Molleman lived in the house you've taken. She was, ah--eccentric.
There were conflicting reports concerning her. Some people said she was
merely a harmless old lady grown a little bit queer in solitude. Others
pictured her as a vindictive, even a cruel, woman. For instance, she
kept as pets over a dozen assorted cats and dogs. There were rumors
that she did not treat them well. So far as I know those rumors were
founded on hearsay."
Mrs. Dallis inspected us closely to see what effect her revelations
were having and went on.
"Well, one night, neighbors living at the other end of the street heard
a terrific commotion proceeding from Mrs. Molleman's house. The dogs
were barking and howling furiously and the cats were screeching. The
neighbors were of a mind to investigate, but finally the racket died
down, and so they went to sleep instead.
"Two days later however, after no further sound had emanated from the
house, the police broke in and discovered a ghastly spectacle. The
dozen or so cats and dogs, their throats cut, were found lying dead in
pools of their own blood. There was at least one of them in every room
in the house. Mrs. Molleman herself was found hanging in the garret.
The entire house was a shambles. It looked as if the remaining cats and
dogs had gone berserk with the smell of blood after Mrs. Molleman had
cut the throats of one or two of them. Apparently she had had to chase
them all over the house. Blood was splattered everywhere."
Mrs. Dallis sighed deeply.
"Mrs. Molleman, it was said, killed herself because she learned that
she was in the advanced stages of an incurable disease. Certain of the
neighbors said she destroyed her pets out of vindictiveness and an evil
heart, but the more charitable view is that she did away with them in
order that they would not suffer abuse and neglect after she was gone."
Her gruesome revelations apparently at an end, Mrs. Dallis sat back and
surveyed us.
Madge, surprisingly, was the first to speak. "It's certainly a terrible
little story," she admitted, frowning, "but I don't quite see what it
has to do with signing the lease. Neither Jim nor I are superstitious."
Mrs. Dallis nodded. "Good," she said. "Neither am I. But nevertheless
it is pertinent to the lease. There has been some strong evidence
that on October 20th of each year--the anniversary of that horrible
night--certain, ah, manifestations have been observed. Therefore the
lease you will sign specifies that from six p.m. to six a.m. on each
October 20th, you will remove yourselves from the premises, lock the
house securely and remain away."
Madge and I glanced at each other. It was certainly a bizarre
requirement, yet I think we were both relieved to learn the details.
To remain away from home one night a year was actually no great
inconvenience.
We agreed to obey the weird clause and signed the lease at once.
After we left, we made light of the matter. We concluded that the
"manifestations" existed only in Mrs. Dallis' mind. October was a long
way off--and we did have a rent.
That year was a hectic albeit prosperous and happy one and the
months flew past. Madge and I were too busy to worry about ghosts of
old ladies. We never encountered any in the house and although we
occasionally remembered the October 20th clause and joked about it, we
were so occupied with other matters we very nearly forgot about the
date when it finally did arrive. Mrs. Dallis, however, had foreseen
the possibility of that and made provision for it. At five o'clock on
the afternoon of October 20th she telephoned to make sure that we were
planning to vacate the house by six. We assured her that we would be
out in an hour.
Actually, we just did make it. We had neglected to pack an overnight
bag till the last minute and, as always, several minor but essential
items had to be searched for. After we had checked the locks on the
back door and all the windows, we stepped out onto the front porch. I
think it was about one-half minute before six p.m. when I turned the
key in the front door and we walked down the porch steps.
We made a lark of the affair. We had dinner at a fine restaurant,
attended a play, drank cocktails and finally turned in at the hotel
room which we had engaged for the occasion.
The next morning Madge sleepily assured me that she had no qualms
whatsoever about returning to our house and that she'd consider me a
fussbucket if I insisted on leaving early so that I could stop at the
place before I left for the office.
I told her I'd go directly from the hotel to work and leave her to
contend with any old ghosts that happened to be nursing a hangover on
our premises.
Madge is always vague about time early in the morning however, and
I did leave the hotel earlier than was necessary. I started driving
toward the office, thinking I'd get a head start on some papers which
had piled up. But some obscure impulse persuaded me to turn the car and
drive toward the suburbs. I felt a bit foolish, but I couldn't argue
myself out of stopping at our house for a quick checkup. I have always
been grateful that I heeded the dim prompting which caused me to change
directions that morning.
When I unlocked the door and walked into the house, everything seemed
in order. The windows and rear door were still securely bolted and
nothing was amiss. I searched the house from cellar to garret and found
nothing disturbed.
Finally, feeling rather sheepish at this point, I sat down in one of
the living room chairs to rest a minute before I drove to work.
As I sat there, I noticed some small object protruding from behind the
divan on the opposite side of the room. I couldn't distinguish what it
was; mild curiosity prompted me to get up and peer behind the divan.
As I bent down, I froze. Huddled against the back of the divan was a
pitiful little heap of fur lying in a pool of blood--our cat, Jinko,
with his throat slashed wide open. It was the tip of his tail which I
had seen protruding.
In our haste to leave the previous evening, we had forgotten about him.
We hadn't noticed him in the house and I think we both subconsciously
assumed that he was outside when we locked up.
I cleaned up the blood, buried the little creature in a corner of the
backyard, poured myself a stiff drink and went to work. Several times
during the day I called up to make sure that Madge was all right. She
called me a ninny and said she couldn't even find an old shroud dropped
around the house.
Of course she got somewhat suspicious in a day or so when Jinko failed
to show up. But he had disappeared for days at a time before, and I
finally persuaded her that he must have wandered away or met with an
accident.
The following summer I saved some of my vacation time; Madge and I
spent the entire week of October 20th in Maine. In December I put
a down payment on a new house. We moved into it just before the
holidays--and one of Madge's Christmas presents was a cuddly little
Persian kitten.
She had been teasing me to buy one for months, but somehow I just
hadn't got around to it till then.
THE MAN WHO FEARED MASKS
Mr. Apondee was terrified by masks or false faces of any type.
Halloween to him was an idiot's festival of unmitigated horror. He
would sooner enter a tiger's lair than attend a masked ball. If he
saw a false face harmlessly dangling in the window of a novelty shop,
he would shudder and turn away. The memory of it would haunt him all
evening long--even intrude in his dreams and torment him until he
awoke, limp with nightmare panic.
The detailed circumstances surrounding the inception of Mr. Apondee's
mask fear were somewhat hazy, since he was scarcely three years old at
the time. But the particular moments of terror he remembered vividly,
as if they had transpired within his recent adult life.
He was sitting in a huge circus tent with his father. It was his first
circus; he was enormously excited, tense, somewhat fearful. He held
tight to his father's hand. Suddenly all the lights went out. There
were screams, frightened cries, roars, howls and monstrous bellowings.
People began pushing and shoving, trying to force passage toward the
entrances of the pitch-black tent.
In the whirlwind commotion he lost his grip on his father's hand. He
was swept away in a trampling, cursing tide of sweating humanity.
He fell down between the seats, screaming, and suddenly out of the
darkness appeared a nightmare face, luminous with a green-silvery
shine, huge of nose, gashed by great white rubbery lips which writhed
with insane merriment. The face bent over him, with its tiny glittering
eyes, its fearful pink mouth and its greasy shine.
His screams of a few moments before turned to delirious shrieks of
ultimate terror. He remembered nothing more.
Eventually of course the lights went back on and the masked circus
clown returned a screaming and hysterical child to its father.
The child screamed all the way out of the circus tent, screamed all
the way home and screamed and sobbed half the night, until exhaustion
brought hypnotic sleep.
The distressed parents finally forgot the unfortunate incident, but the
child never did. In the recesses of his memory a grotesque and hideous
mask wavered always just out of sight, awaiting its chance to loom out
of the darkness, awaiting the sudden unexpected moment when it would
leap into light and petrify him with pure terror.
The show window of a toy store might bring it lunging out at him.
He might be swept with acute panic upon glancing up at a billboard
advertising a traveling sideshow. Once he nearly fainted on the
street when a weirdly masked "Man from Mars"--advertising a local
movie--strode around a corner in front of him.
The fear remained with him through his childhood, through his
adolescence and on into full maturity. It seemed impervious to the
rationalizing of his adult years. It would not be argued away. Its
roots had pierced the psychic marrow of his being and resisted all his
efforts to wrench them out.
The obsessive fear haunted him to such an extent that he finally
consulted a reputable psychiatrist.
The psychiatrist patiently heard him out and then painstakingly
explained in simple layman language that his early childhood experience
had made an impact on his impressionable, too-vulnerable young mind
all out of proportion to its actual importance. He pointed out that
the mask fear was far more than a physical one. True, the child had
been buffeted by the circus crowd, had been shoved and pushed down
between the seats--painfully and perhaps severely bruised. But the
fear went deeper than that. When the lights in the circus tent went
out, the child had been holding tight to his father's hand. The father
represented security, comfort, protection, home. Suddenly the child was
hurled into milling blackness and then out of the darkness appeared a
hideous leering face which bore down on him with apparent evil intent.
So--the psychiatrist explained--in Mr. Apondee's subconscious mind
the mask--or any mask--had come to symbolize the loss of security,
of stability and protection. It symbolized all of the inherited and
acquired fears which lurked in Mr. Apondee's own psychic depths.
Mr. Apondee listened and he was impressed. He felt better. He believed
that he now thoroughly understood the origin of the mask terror, and in
understanding, he judged, was exorcism.
But this was only partially true. Although the explanation tended to
alleviate Mr. Apondee's mask fear, it by no means entirely dispelled
the fixation. The fear remained, buried deep in Mr. Apondee's psychic
being, and even though it no longer flickered into furious life at the
smallest draft of provocation, still it went on smouldering.
In his early thirties Mr. Apondee got married, and if his marriage
had its occasional "ups and downs", it was probably no better and no
worse than the average. All considered, it might be termed reasonably
successful.
Probably Mr. Apondee believed it far more successful than did his
spouse. Mrs. Apondee was frequently exasperated by her husband's lack
of enterprise, by his timidity and by his tendency to accept rather
than alter his lot.
But after the first few years she seldom complained. It did no good,
and in any case Mr. Apondee had plenty of laudable qualities. Although
his job was a modest one, he worked steadily at it. He didn't drink,
nor stay out at night, nor grumble about the meals.
Mr. Apondee himself was quite satisfied with his circumstances. He had
a faithful wife, a small but neat apartment home and a job which was
probably his as long as he wanted it, providing he was willing to
forego any prospect of raises within the foreseeable future. All in
all, he felt that he possessed a measure of security.
He never mentioned his mask fear to his wife. He had an uncomfortable
feeling that she would consider it silly, that she might even ridicule
him. It was, after all, an awkward thing to explain to anyone and Mr.
Apondee could see no point in broaching it.
If Mrs. Apondee had known about it, the chances are the surprise
birthday party for Mr. Apondee would have been staged in a far less
fanciful manner.
Actually, the introduction of the masks was an afterthought.
The five couples and Mrs. Apondee were crowded into the Apondee's small
apartment late one October afternoon. A big birthday cake covered with
pink icing and candles rested on a table in the living room. It was Mr.
Apondee's birthday and they meant to surprise him when he came home
from work at five-thirty.
Suddenly young Mrs. Tyler had an idea. She was giving a Halloween
masquerade party later in the month, she said, and that very afternoon
she had been out shopping for masks. She had them with her now. Why
didn't they each put on a mask before Mr. Apondee came in? It would be
great fun; for a minute he wouldn't know who any of them were and that
would add to the element of surprise.
They all--including Mrs. Apondee--agreed with enthusiasm. Then a
further eerie touch was added when fertile Mr. Fentonby suggested that
they put out all the lights in the apartment, except in the vestibule,
pull down the shades, and hold lighted birthday candles near their
masked faces. When Mr. Apondee first came in, they would remain silent
and he would be confronted by nothing but an assemblage of weird
glowing masks, hovering, as it were, in mid-air.