Nightmares & Geezenstacks Page 2

  Until now, until Laura had come along. Sweet, lovable little Laura who was their house guest this week and who was everything that his wife was not, fragile and dainty, adorably helpless and sweet. He was mad about her and knew that in her lay salvation for him. Married to Laura he could be a man again, and would be. And she would marry him, he felt sure; she had to for she was his only hope. This time he had to win, no matter what his wife said or did.

  He showered and dressed quickly, dreading the coming scene with his wife but eager to get it over with while his courage lasted. He went downstairs and found his wife alone at the breakfast table.

  She looked up as he came in. “Good morning, dear,” she said. “Laura has finished breakfast and gone for a walk. I asked her to, so I could talk to you privately.”

  Good, he thought, sitting down across from her. His wife had seen what had been happening to him and was making things easier by bringing up the subject herself.

  “You see, William,” she said, “I want a divorce. I know this will come as a shock to you, but—Laura and I are in love with each other and are going away together.”

  NIGHTMARE IN WHITE

  He awoke suddenly and completely, wondering why he had let himself drop off when he hadn’t meant to, and quickly glanced at the luminous dial of his wrist watch. It gleamed brightly in the otherwise utter darkness and told him that the time was only a few minutes after eleven o’clock. He relaxed; he’d taken only a very brief cat nap. He’d gone to bed here, on this silly sofa, less than half an hour ago. If his wife really was going to come to him, it was too early. She’d have to wait until she was positive that his damned sister was asleep, and sound asleep.

  It was such a ridiculous situation. They’d been married only three weeks, were on their way back home from their honeymoon, and this was the first time he’d slept alone in that time—and all because of his sister Deborah’s absurd insistence that they spend the night in her apartment here on their way back home. Another four hours’ driving would have got them there, but Debbie had insisted and finally carried her point. After all, he’d realized, a night’s continence wouldn’t hurt him, and he had been tired; it would be much better to face his last lap of driving fresh, in the morning.

  Of course Debbie’s apartment had only the one bedroom and he knew in advance, before accepting her invitation, that he could not possibly have accepted her offer to sleep, herself, out here and let him and Betty have the bedroom. There are degrees of hospitality which one cannot accept, even from one’s own sweet and loving spinster sister. But he’d felt sure, or almost sure, that Betty would wait out his sister’s going to sleep and come to join him, if only for a few affectionate moments—for she might be inhibited in giving more than that lest sounds might awaken Debbie—to give him a better “good night” than, under his sister’s eyes, they’d indulged in.

  Surely she’d come to him—at least for a real good night kiss, and if she was willing to risk going beyond that, so was he—and so he’d decided not to go to sleep right away, but to wait for her to come to him, at least for an hour or so.

  Surely she would—yes, the door was opening quietly in the darkness and quietly closing again, only the faint click of the latch being really audible, and then there was the soft rustle of her nightgown or negligee or whatever falling, and she was under the covers with him, pressing her body against his, and the only conversation was his whispered “Darling…” and her whispered “Shhhh…” But what more conversation was needed?

  None at all, none at all, but for the so-long so-short minutes until the door opened again, this time with glaring white light coming through it, outlining in white horror the silhouette of his wife standing there rigid and beginning to scream.

  NIGHTMARE IN BLUE

  He awoke to the brightest, bluest morning he had ever seen. Through the window beside the bed, he could see an almost incredible sky. George slid out of bed quickly, wide awake and not wanting to miss another minute of the first day of his vacation. But he dressed quietly so as not to awaken his wife. They had arrived here at the lodge—loaned them by a friend for the week of their vacation—late the evening before and Wilma had been very tired from the trip; he’d let her sleep as long as she could. He carried his shoes into the living room to put them on.

  Tousle-haired little Tommy, their five-year-old, came out of the smaller bedroom he’d slept in, yawning. “Want some breakfast?” George asked him. And when Tommy nodded, “Get dressed then, and join me in the kitchen.”

  George went to the kitchen but before starting breakfast, he stepped through the outside door and stood looking around; it had been dark when they’d arrived and he knew what the country was like only by description. It was virgin woodland, more beautiful than he’d pictured it. The nearest other lodge, he’d been told, was a mile away, on the other side of a fairly large lake. He couldn’t see the lake for the trees but the path that started here from the kitchen door led to it, a little less than a quarter of a mile away. His friend had told him it was good for swimming, good for fishing. The swimming didn’t interest George; he wasn’t afraid of the water but he didn’t like it either, and he’d never learned how to swim. But his wife was a good swimmer and so was Tommy—a regular little water rat, she called him.

  Tommy joined him on the step; the boy’s idea of getting dressed had been to put on a pair of swim trunks so it hadn’t taken him long. “Daddy,” he said, “let’s go see the lake before we eat, huh, Daddy?”

  “All right,” George said. He wasn’t hungry himself and maybe when they got back Wilma would be awake.

  The lake was beautiful, an even more intense blue than the sky, and smooth as a mirror. Tommy plunged into it gleefully and George called to him to stay where it was shallow, not to swim out.

  “I can swim, Daddy. I swim swell.”

  “Yes, but your mother’s not here. You stay close.”

  “Water’s warm, Daddy.”

  Far out, George saw a fish jump. Right after breakfast he’d come down with his rod and see if he could catch a lunch for them.

  A path along the edge of the lake led, he’d been told, to a place a couple of miles away where rowboats could be rented; he’d rent one for the whole week and keep it tied up here. He stared toward the end of the lake trying to see the place.

  Suddenly, chillingly, there was an anguished cry, “Daddy, my leg, it—”

  George whirled and saw Tommy’s head way out, twenty yards at least, and it went under the water and came up again, but this time there was a frightening glubbing sound when Tommy tried to yell again. It must be a cramp, George thought frantically; he’d seen Tommy swim several times that distance.

  For a second he almost flung himself into the water, but then he told himself: It won’t help him for me to drown with him and if I can get Wilma there’s at least a chance…

  He ran back toward the lodge. A hundred yards away he started yelling “Wilma!” at the top of his voice and when he was almost to the kitchen door she came through it, in pajamas. And then she was running after him toward the lake, passing him and getting ahead since he was already winded, and he was fifty yards behind her when she reached the edge, ran into the water and swam strongly toward the spot where for a moment the back of the boy’s head showed at the surface.

  She was there in a few strokes and had him and then, as she put her feet down to tread water for the turn, he saw with sudden sheer horror—a horror mirrored in his wife’s blue eyes—that she was standing on the bottom, holding their dead son, in only three feet of water.

  NIGHTMARE IN YELLOW

  He awoke when the alarm clock rang, but lay in bed a while after he’d shut it off, going a final time over the plans he’d made for embezzlement that day and for murder that evening.

  Every little detail had been worked out, but this was the final check. Tonight at forty-six minutes after eight he’d be free, in every way. He’d picked that moment because this was his fortieth birthday and that was the exact t
ime of day, of the evening rather, when he had been born. His mother had been a bug on astrology, which was why the moment of his birth had been impressed on him so exactly. He wasn’t superstitious himself but it had struck his sense of humor to have his new life begin at forty, to the minute.

  Time was running out on him, in any case. As a lawyer :t who specialized in handling estates, a lot of money passed through his hands—and some of it had passed into them. A year ago he’d “borrowed” five thousand dollars to put into something that looked like a sure-fire way to double or triple the money, but he’d lost it instead. Then he’d “borrowed” more to gamble with, in one way or another, to try to recoup the first loss. Now he was behind to the tune of over thirty thousand; the shortage couldn’t be hidden more than another few months and there wasn’t a hope that he could replace the missing money by that time. So he had been raising all the cash he could without arousing suspicion, by carefully liquidating assets, and by this afternoon he’d have running-away money to the tune of well over a hundred thousand dollars, enough to last him the rest of his life.

  And they’d never catch him. He’d planned every detail of his trip, his destination, his new identity, and it was foolproof. He’d been working on it for months.

  His decision to kill his wife had been relatively an afterthought. The motive was simple: he hated her. But it was only after he’d come to the decision that he’d never go to jail, that he’d kill himself if he was ever apprehended, that it came to. him that—since he’d die anyway if caught—he had nothing to lose in leaving a dead wife behind him instead of a living one.

  He’d hardly been able to keep from laughing at the appropriateness of the birthday present she’d given him (yesterday, a day ahead of time); it had been a new suitcase. She’d also talked him into celebrating his birthday by letting her meet him downtown for dinner at seven, Little did she guess how the celebration would go after that. He planned to have her home by eight forty-six and satisfy his sense of the fitness of things by making himself a widower at that exact moment. There was a practical advantage, too, of leaving her dead. If he left her alive but asleep she’d guess what had happened and call the police when she found him gone in the morning. If he left her dead her body would not be found that soon, possibly not for two or three days, and he’d have a much better start.

  Things went smoothly at his office; by the time he went to meet his wife everything was ready. But she dawdled over drinks and dinner and he began to worry whether he could get her home by eight forty-six. It was ridiculous, he knew, but it had become important that his moment of freedom should come then and not a minute earlier or a minute later. He watched his watch.

  He would have missed it by half a minute if he’d waited till they were inside the house. But the dark of the porch of their house was perfectly safe, as safe as inside. He swung the blackjack viciously once, as she stood at the front door, waiting for him to open it. He caught her before she fell and managed to hold her upright with one arm while he got the door open and then got it closed from the inside.

  Then he flicked the switch and yellow light leaped to fill the room, and, before they could see that his wife was dead and that he was holding her up, all the assembled birthday party guests shouted “Surprise!”

  NIGHTMARE IN RED

  He awoke without mowing what had awakened him until a second temblor, only a minute after the first, shook the bed slightly and rattled small objects on the dresser. He lay waiting for a third shock but none came, not then.

  He realized, though, that he was wide awake now and probably would not be able to go back to sleep. He looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch and saw that it was only three o’clock, the middle of the night. He got out of bed and walked, in his pajamas, to the window. It was open and a cool breeze came through it, and he, could see the twinkling, flickering lights in the black sky and could hear the sounds of-night, Somewhere, bells. But why bells at this hour? Ringing for disaster? Had the mild temblors here been damaging quakes elsewhere, nearby? Or was a real quake coming and the bells a warning, a warning to people to leave their houses and get out into the open for survival?

  Suddenly, although not from fear but from a strange compulsion he had no wish to analyze, he wanted to be out there and not here. He had to run, he had to.

  And he was running, down the hallway and out the front door, running silently in bare feet down the long straight walk that led to the gate. And through the gate that swung shut behind him and into the field… Field? Should there be a field here, right outside his gate? Especially a field dotted with posts, thick ones like truncated telephone poles his own height? But before he could organize his thinking, try to start from scratch and remember where here was and who he was and what he was doing here at all, there was another temblor. More violent this time; it made him stagger in his running and run into one of the mysterious posts, a glancing blow that hurt his shoulder and deflected his running course, almost making him lose his footing. What was this weird compulsion that kept him going toward—what?

  And then the real earthquake hit, the ground seemed to rise up under him and shake itself and when it ended he was lying on his back staring up at the monstrous sky in which now suddenly appeared, in miles-high glowing red letters a word. The word was TILT and as he stared at it all the other flashing lights went off and the bells quit ringing and it was the end of everything.

  UNFORTUNATELY

  Ralph NC-5 sighed with relief as he caught sight of Planet Four of Arcturus in the spotter scope, just where his computer had told him it would be. Arcturus IV was the only inhabited or inhabitable planet of its primary and it was quite a few light-years to the next star system.

  He needed food—his fuel and water supplies were okay but the commissary department on Pluto had made a mistake in stocking his scouter—and, according to the space manual, the natives were friendly. They’d give him anything he asked for.

  The manual was very specific on that point; he reread the brief section on the Arcturians as soon as he had set the controls for automatic landing.

  “The Arcturians,” he read, “are inhuman, but very friendly. A pilot landing here need only ask for what he wants, and it is given to him freely, readily, and without argument.

  “Communication with them, however, must be by paper and pencil as they have no vocal organs and no organs of hearing. However, they read and write English with considerable fluency.”

  Ralph NC-5’s mouth watered as he tried to decide what he wanted to eat first, after two days of complete abstinence from food, preceded by five days of short rations; a week ago he had discovered the commissary department’s mistake in stocking his lockers.

  Foods, wonderful foods, chased one another through his mind.

  He landed. The Arcturians, a dozen of them and they were indeed inhuman—twelve feet tall, six-armed, bright magenta—approached him and their leader bowed and handed him paper and pencil.

  Suddenly he knew exactly what he wanted; he wrote rapidly and handed back the pad. It passed from hand to hand among them.

  Then abruptly he found himself grabbed, his arms pinioned. And then tied to a stake around which they were piling brushwood and sticks. One of them lighted it.

  He screamed protests but they fell, not on deaf ears but on no ears at all. He screamed in pain, and then stopped screaming.

  The space manual had been quite correct in saying that the Arcturians read and write English with considerable fluency. But it had omitted to add that they were very poor at spelling; else the last thing Ralph NC-5 would have requested would have been a sizzling steak.

  GRANNY’S BIRTHDAY

  The Halperins were a very close-knit family. Wade Smith, one of the only two non-Halperins present, envied them that, since he had no family himself—but the envy was tempered into a mellow glow by the glass in his hand.

  It was Granny Halperin’s birthday party, her eightieth birthday; everyone present except Smith and one other man was a Halp
erin, and was named Halperin. Granny had three sons and a daughter; all were present and the three sons were married and had their wives with them. That made eight Halperins, counting Granny. And there were four members of the second generation, grandchildren, one with his wife, and that made thirteen Halperins. Thirteen Halperins, Smith counted; with himself and the other non-Halperin, a man named Cross, that made fifteen adults. And there had been, earlier, three more Halperins, great-grandchildren, but they had been put to bed earlier in the evening, at various hours according to their respective ages.

  And he liked them all, Smith thought mellowly, although now that the children had been abed a while, liquor was flowing freely and the party was getting a bit loud and boisterous for his taste. Everyone was drinking; even Granny, seated on a chair not unlike a throne, had a glass of sherry in her hand, her third for the evening.

  She was a wonderfully sweet and vivacious little old lady, Smith thought. Definitely, though, a matriarch; sweet as she was, Smith was thinking; she ruled her family with a rod of iron in a velvet glove; he was just inebriated enough to get his metaphors mixed.