The Cleft, and Other Odd Tales

by Gahan Wilson

  He tiptoed out of the room and peered down the hall and his breath stopped. The beam of his flashlight pointed at the bottom of the door leading to the attic and revealed Miss Dinwitties high-button shoes with their toes up in the air. Even as he gaped at them they edged out of sight in uneven little starts to the sounds of a faint bumping and an even fainter scrabbling.

  Oh my God, thought Lester, oh my Jesus God, oh please don't let none of this happen to me, please, God!

  Still on tiptoe, even more on tiptoe, he worked his way to the stairs. He wanted to sob but he told himself he mustn't do it because he'd never be able to hear the rats if he was sobbing. He started down the stairs and was halfway when a dim instinct made him look back up to the top.

  There, peering down at him, was a lone rat holding a discarded plastic knitting needle proudly upright. Fixed to the needle's top was a tiny rectangle of foul, tattered cloth. It took Lester several horrible seconds to realize he was looking at the flag of the rats.

  "I didn't mean nothing!" he whispered, groping his way backward down the stairs. He plucked the cap with rose brothers exterminators from his head and flung it from him, crying: "It was just a goddam way to make a living!”

  But the time for all that was long since past, and the rat army, in perfect ranks and files on the floor below, watched its enemy approaching, step by step, and eagerly awaited its general's command.

  Yesterday's Witch

  Her house is gone now. Someone tore it down and bulldozed away her trees and set up an ugly apartment building made of cheap bricks and cracking concrete on the flattened place they'd built. I drove by there a few nights ago; I'd come back to town for the first time in years to give a lecture at the university, and I saw blue TV flickers glowing in the building's living rooms.

  Her house sat on a small rise, I remember, with a wide stretch of scraggly lawn between it and the ironwork fence which walled off her property from the sidewalk and the rest of the outside world. The windows of her house peered down at you through a thick tangle of oak tree branches, and I can remember walking by and knowing she was peering out at me, and hunching up my shoulders because I couldn't help it, but never, ever, giving her the satisfaction of seeing me hurry because of fear.

  To the adults she was Miss Marble, but we children knew better. We knew she had another name, though none of us knew just what it was, and we knew she was a witch. I don't know who it was told me first about Miss Marble's being a witch; it might have been Billy Drew. I think it was, but I had already guessed in spite of being less than six. I grew up, all of us grew up, sure and certain of Miss Marble's being a witch.

  You never managed to get a clear view of Miss Marble, or I don't ever remember doing so, except that once. You just got peeks and hints. A quick glimpse of her wide, short body as she scuttled up the front porch steps; a brief hint of her brown-wrapped form behind a thick clump of bushes by the garage where, it was said, an electric runabout sat rusting away; a sudden flash of her fantastically wrinkled face in the narrowing slot of a closing door, and that was all.

  Fred Pulley claimed he had gotten a good long look at her one afternoon. She had been weeding, or something, absorbed at digging in the ground, and off guard and careless even though she stood a mere few feet from the fence. Fred had fought down his impulse to keep on going by, and he had stood and studied her for as much as two or three minutes before she looked up and saw him and snarled and turned away.

  We never tired of asking Fred about what he had seen.

  "Her teeth, Fred," one of us would whisper—you almost always talked about Miss Marble in whispers—Mid you see her teeth?"

  "They're long and yellow," Fred would say. "And they come to points at the ends. And I think I saw blood on them."

  None of us really believed Fred had seen Miss Marble, understand, and we certainly didn't believe that part about the blood, but we were so very curious about her, and when you're really curious about something, especially if you're a bunch of kids, you want to get all the information on the subject even if you're sure it's lies.

  So we didn't believe what Fred Pulley said about Miss Marble's having blood on her teeth, nor about the bones he'd seen her pulling out of the ground, but we remembered it all the same, just in case, and it entered into any calculations we made about Miss Marble.

  Halloween was the time she figured most prominently in our thoughts. First because she was a witch, of course, and second because of a time-honored ritual among the neighborhood children concerning her and ourselves and that evening of the year. It was a kind of test by fire that every male child had to go through when he reached the age of thirteen, or be shamed forever after. I have no idea when it originated; I only know that when I attained my thirteenth year and was thereby qualified and doomed for the ordeal, the rite was established beyond question.

  I can remember putting on my costume for that memorable Halloween, an old Prince Albert coat and a papier-mache mask which bore a satisfying likeness to a decayed cadaver, with the feeling I was girding myself for a great battle. I studied my reflection in a mirror affixed by swivels to my bedroom bureau and wondered gravely if I would be able to meet the challenge this night would bring. Unsure, but determined, I picked up my brown paper shopping bag, which was very large so as to accommodate as much candy as possible, said goodbye to my mother and father and dog, and went out. I had not gone a block before I met George Watson and Billy Drew.

  "Have you got anything yet?" asked Billy.

  "No." I indicated the emptiness of my bag. "I just started."

  "The same with usr" said George. And then he looked at me carefully. "Are you ready?"

  "Yes," I said, realizing I had not been ready until that very moment, and feeling an encouraging glow at knowing I was. "I can do it all right."

  Mary Taylor and her little sister Betty came upr and so did Eddy Baker and Phil Myers and the Arthur brothers. I couldn't see where they all had come from, but it seemed as if every kid in the neighborhood was suddenly there, crowding around under the streetlamp, costumes flapping in the wind, holding bags and boxes and staring at me with glistening, curious eyes.

  "Do you want to do it now," asked George, "or do you want to wait?"

  George had done it the year before and he had waited.

  "I'll do it now," I said.

  I began walking along the sidewalk, the others following after me. We crossed Garfield Street and Peabody Street and that brought us to Baline Avenue where we turned left. I could see Miss Marble's iron fence half a block ahead, but I was careful not to slow my pace. When we arrived at the fence I walked to the gate with as firm a tread as I could muster and put my hand upon its latch. The metal was cold and made me think of coffin handles and graveyard diggers' picks. I pushed it down and the gate swung open with a low, rusty groaning.

  Now it was up to me alone. I was face to face with the ordeal. The basic terms of it were simple enough: walk down the crumbling path which led through the tall, dry grass to Miss Marble's porch, cross the porch, ring Miss Marble's bell, and escape. I had seen George Watson do it last year and I had seen other brave souls do it before him. I knew it was not an impossible task.

  It was a chilly night with a strong, persistent wind and clouds scudding overhead. The moon was three-fourths full and it looked remarkably round and solid in the sky. I became suddenly aware, for the first time in my life, that it was a real thing up there. I wondered how many Halloweens it had looked down on and what it had seen.

  I pulled the lapels of my Prince Albert coat close about me and started walking down Miss Marble's path. I walked because all the others had run or skulked, and I was resolved to bring new dignity to the test if I possibly could.

  From afar the house looked bleak and abandoned, a thing of cold blues and grays and greens, but as I drew nearer, a peculiar phenomenon began to assert itself. The windows, which from the sidewalk had seemed only to reflect the moon's glisten, now began to take on a warmer glow; the walls and porch,
which had seemed all shriveled, peeling paint, and leprous patches of rotting wood, now began to appear well kept. I swallowed and strained my eyes. I had been prepared for a growing feeling of menace, for ever darker shadows, and this increasing evidence of warmth and tidiness absolutely baffled me.

  By the time I reached the porch steps the place had taken on a positively cozy feel. I now saw that the building was in excellent repair and that it was well painted with a smooth coat of reassuring cream. The light from the windows was now unmistakably cheerful, a ruddy, friendly pumpkin kind of orange suggesting crackling fireplaces all set and ready for toasting marshmallows. There was a very unwitchlike clump of Indian corn fixed to the front door, and I was almost certain I detected an odor of sugar and cinnamon wafting into the cold night air.

  I stepped onto the porch, gaping. I had anticipated many awful possibilities during this past year. Never far from my mind had been the horrible pet Miss Marble was said to own, a something-or-other, which was all claws and scales and flew on wings with transparent webbing. Perhaps, I had thought, this thing would swoop down from the bare oak limbs and carry me off while my friends on the sidewalk screamed and screamed. Again, I had not dismissed the notion Miss Marble might turn me into a frog with a little motion of her fingers and then step on me with her foot and squish me.

  But here I was feeling foolish, very young, crossing this friendly porch and smelling—I was sure of it now—sugar and cinnamon and cider and, what's more, butterscotch on top of that. I raised my hand to ring the bell and was astonished at myself for not being the least bit afraid when the door softly opened and there stood Miss Marble herself.

  I looked at her and she smiled at me. She was short and plump, and she wore an apron with a thick ruffle all along its edges, and her face was smooth and red and shiny as an autumn apple. She wore bifocals on the tip of her tiny nose and she had her white hair fixed in a perfectly round bun in the exact center of the top of her head. Delicious odors wafted round her through the open door and I peered greedily past her.

  "Well," she said in a mild, old voice, "I am so glad that someone has at last come to have a treat. I've waited so many years, and each year I've been ready, but nobody's come."

  She stood to one side and I could see a table in the hall piled with candy and nuts and bowls of fruit and platesful of pies and muffins and cake, all of it shining and glittering in the warm, golden glow which seemed everywhere. I heard Miss Marble chuckle warmly. •

  "Why don't you call your friends in? I'm sure there will be plenty for all."

  I turned and looked down the path and saw them, huddled in the moonlight by the gate, hunched wide-eyed over their boxes and bags. I felt a sort of generous pity for them. I walked to the steps and waved.

  "Come on! It's all right!"

  They would not budge.

  "May I show them something?"

  She nodded yes and I went into the house and got an enormous orange-frosted cake with numbers of golden sugar pumpkins on its sides.

  "Look," I cried, lifting the cake into the moonlight, "look at this! And she's got lots more! She always had, but we never asked for it!"

  George was the first through the gate, as I knew he would be. Billy came next, and then Eddy, then the rest. They came slowly, at first, timid as mice, but then the smells of chocolate and tangerines and brown sugar got to their noses and they came faster. By the time they had arrived at the porch they had lost their fear, the same as I, but their astonished faces showed me how I must have looked to Miss Marble when she'd opened the door.

  "Come in, children. I'm so glad you've all come at last!"

  None of us had ever seen such candy or dared to dream of such cookies and cakes. We circled the table in the hall, awed by its contents, clutching at our bags.

  "Take all you want, children. It's all for you."

  Little Betty was the first to reach out. She got a gumdrop as big as a plum and was about to pop it into her mouth when Miss Marble said:

  "Oh, no, dear, don't eat it now. That's not the way you do with tricks or treats. You wait till you get out on the sidewalk and then you go ahead and gobble it up. Just put it in your bag for now, sweetie."

  Betty was not all that pleased with the idea of putting off eating her gumdrop, but she did as Miss Marble asked and plopped it into her bag and quickly followed it with other items such as licorice cats and apples dipped in caramel and pecans lumped together with some lovely-looking brown stuff, and soon all the other children, myself very much included, were doing the same, filling our bags and boxes industriously, giving the task of clearing the table as rapidly as possible our entire attention.

  Soon, amazingly soon, we had done it. True, there was the occasional peanut, now and then a largish crumb survived, but by and large, the job was done. What was left was fit only for rats and roaches, I thought, and then was puzzled by the thought. Where had such an unpleasant idea come from?

  How our bags bulged! How they strained to hold what we had stuffed into them! How wonderfully heavy they were to hold!

  Miss Marble was at the door now, holding it open and smiling at us.

  "You must come back next year, sweeties, and I will give you more of the same."

  We trooped outf some of us giving the table one last glance just to make suref and then we headed down the pathf Miss Marble waving us goodbye. The longf dead grass at the sides of the path brushed stiffly against our bagsf making strange hissing sounds. I felt as cold as if I had been standing in the chill night air all along, and not comforted by the cozy warmth inside Miss Marble's house. The moon was higher now and seemed—I didn't know how or why—to be mocking us.

  I heard Mary Taylor scolding her little sister: "She said not to eat any till we got to the sidewalk!"

  "I don't care. I want some!"

  The wind had gotten stronger and I could hear the stiff tree branches growl high over our heads. The fence seemed far away and I wondered why it was taking us so long to get to it. I looked back at the house and my mouth went dry when I saw that it was gray and old and dark, once more, and that the only light from its windows was reflections of the pale moon.

  Suddenly little Betty Taylor began to cry, first in small, choking sobs, and then in loud wails, George Watson said: ’'What's wrong?" and then there was a pause, and then George cursed and threw Betty's bag over the lawn toward the house and his own box after it. They landed with a queer rustling slither that made the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I let go of my own bag and it flopped, bulging, into the grass by my feet. It looked like a huge, pale toad with a gaping, grinning mouth.

  One by one the others rid themselves of what they carried. Some of the younger ones, whimpering, would not let go, but the older children gently separated them from the things they clutched.

  I opened the gate and held it while the rest filed out onto the sidewalk. I followed them and closed the gate firmly. We stood and looked into the darkness beyond the fence. Here and there one of our abandoned boxes or bags seemed to glimmer faintly, some of them moved—I'll swear it—though others claimed it was just an illusion produced by the waving grass. All of us heard the high, thin laughter of the witch.

  Them Bleaks

  Sheriff Olson had no sooner emerged from Mae's Cafe and tilted the big, gold-starred car toward the driver's side by heaving his considerable bulk down behind its wheel when he heard the voice of Wilbur, his chief deputy, fighting its way through the speaker of the two-way radio along with a tangle of static.

  "It's them Bleaks, Sheriff." Wilbur's voice was muffled in what seemed to be a fearsome cold. "It's that Mr. Bleak, the writer fellah. He just called in and says you're so hurry over to his place right away on account of what he found."

  Olson leaned forward and snatched the microphone from its dashboard hammock as the frown line between his tufty orange eyebrows extended slightly. There had been no frown line on the Sheriff's broad, smooth forehead before the Bleaks moved into Commonplace, but now there w
as, and every week

  it seemed to grow just a little longer and dig in just a little deeper.

  "What's he got to show me, Wilbur?" the Sheriff asked, speaking very calmly.

  "He says he's gone and found somebody what's been murdered."

  The crease in the Sheriff's forehead climbed like the red line in a thermometer nearly halfway up to the edge of his close-cropped, copper hair. Wilbur's words had struck him like a snake. He turned, quietly and gently like a fragile man, and then suddenly pounded the cushions violently enough to bounce himself in the seat.

  "Damn!" he shouted, raising muffled echoes from the car's padded insides. "Damn and double goddam damn!"

  He took three deep breaths in a row, holding the microphone helpless in a strangler's grip before his blotching, swelling face. Now he could no longer even pretend to doubt. Now he knew for certain sure he'd been wrong all along about the Bleaks.

  "I'll take care of that call, Wilbur." He growled it out in a soft, confidential whisper through grinding teeth. "Don't you let nobody else take that call, you hear me? Don't you let nobody else get near it!"

  The second he heard Wilbur's awed "Yezzur," he started up the engine with a roar, gripped the wheel with both his big, freckly hands, and spat gravel as he spun out of Mae's parking lot and down the road with the car's sparklers and sirens on full tilt.

  They'd seemed to be so nice, he thought grimly to himself, giving his square head a fierce, bulldog shake as two of Willy Orville's chickens died all unnoticed underneath his wheels.

  He'd checked the whole family over carefully, or thought he had, and they'd looked to be just as nice and friendly a bunch as you could hope for.

  Of course he'd been downright pleased when they'd come house hunting here in Commonplace half a year ago, bringing their two kids and their big, black, toothy old mastiff. He had to admit he was awed by the very idea a famous and successful writer like Robert Bleak, a man who could live wherever he chose, would even consider living in Le Piege county. Most outsiders who had any choice at all steered clear of this whole part of the state and were unkind enough to call it the armpit of America when they didn't call it worse.