The Big Book of Reel Murders

by Stories That Inspired Great Crime Films (epub)

  I didn’t leave right then, for all my preparations. I went back into the room and closed the door after me on the inside, and staggered dazedly around for a moment or two. Once I dropped down limply on the edge of the bed, then turned around and noticed what it was, and got hastily up again, more frightened than ever. Another time, I remember, I thrust my face close to the mirror in the dresser, drew down my lower lid with one finger, stared intently at the white of my eyeball. Even as I did it, I didn’t know what I meant by it myself, didn’t know what it was to tell me. It didn’t tell me anything.

  And still another time, I looked out of the window, as if to see if the outside world was still there. It was. The houses across the way looked just like they’d looked last night. The lady on the third floor had her bedding airing over the windowsill, just like every morning. An iceman was gouging a partition across a cake of ice with one point of his tongs preparatory to picking it in two. A little boy was swinging his books on his way to school, killing as much time as he could by walking along spanning the curb, one foot up, one foot down.

  There was nothing the matter out there. It was in here, with me.

  I decided I’d better go to work maybe that would exorcise me. I fled from the room almost as though it were haunted. It was too late to stop off at a breakfast-counter now. I didn’t want any, anyway. My stomach kept giving little quivers. In the end I didn’t go to work either. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have been any good. I telephoned in that I was too ill to come, and it was no idle excuse, even though I was upright on my two legs.

  I roamed around the rest of the day in the sunshine. Wherever the sunshine was the brightest, I sought and stayed in that place, and when it moved on I moved with it. I couldn’t get it bright enough or strong enough. I avoided the shade, I edged away from it, even the slight shade of an awning or of a tree.

  And yet the sunshine didn’t warm me. Where others mopped their brows and moved out of it, I stayed—and remained cold inside. And the shade was winning the battle as the hours lengthened. It outlasted the sun. The sun weakened and died; the shade deepened and spread. Night was coming on, the time of dreams, the enemy.

  I went to Cliff’s house late. My mind had been made up to go there for hours past, but I went there late on purpose. The first time I got there they were still at the table, I could see them through the front window. I walked around the block repeatedly, until Lil had gotten up from the table and taken all the dishes with her, and Cliff had moved to another chair and was sitting there alone. I did all this so she wouldn’t ask me to sit down at the table with them, I couldn’t have stood it.

  I rang the bell and she opened the door, dried her hands, and said heartily: “Hello stranger. I was just saying to Cliff only tonight, it’s about time you showed up around here.”

  I wanted to detach him from her, but first I had to sit through about ten minutes of her. She was my sister, but you don’t tell women things like I wanted to tell him. I don’t know why, but you don’t. You tell them the things you have under control; the things that you’re frightened of, you tell other men if you tell anyone.

  Finally she said, “I’ll just finish up the dishes, and then I’ll be back.”

  The minute the doorway was empty I whispered urgently, “Get your hat and take a walk with me outside. I want to tell you something—alone.”

  On our way out he called in to the kitchen, “Vince and I are going out to stretch our legs, we’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

  She called back immediately and warningly: “Now Cliff, only beer—if that’s what you’re going for.”

  It put the idea in his head, if nothing else, but I said: “No, I want to be able to tell you this clearly, it’s going to sound hazy enough as it is; let’s stay out in the open.”

  We strolled slowly along the sidewalk; he was on his feet a lot and it was no treat to him, I suppose, but he was a good-natured sort of fellow, didn’t complain. He was a detective. I probably would have gone to him about it anyway even if he hadn’t been, but the fact that he was, of course, made it the inevitable thing to do.

  He had to prompt me, because I didn’t know where to begin. “So what’s the grief, boy friend?”

  “Cliff, last night I dreamed I killed a fellow. I don’t know who he was or where it was supposed to be. His nail creased my wrist, his fingers bruised the sides of my neck, and a button came off him somewhere and got locked in my hand. And finally, after I’d done it, I locked the door of a closet I’d propped him up in, put the key away in my pocket. And when I woke up—well, look.”

  We had stopped under a street light. I turned to face him. I drew back my cuff to show him. “Can you see it?” He said he could. I dragged down my collar with both hands, first on one side, then on the other. “Can you see them? Can you see the faint purplish marks there? They’re turning a little black now.”

  He said he could.

  “And the button, the same shape and size and everything, was in my trouser-pocket along with my change. It’s on the dresser back in my own room now. If you want to come over, you can see it for yourself. And last of all, the key turned up on me, next to my own key, in the pocket where I always keep it. I’ve got it right here, I’ll show it to you. I’ve been carrying it around with me all day.”

  It took me a little while to get it out, my hand was shaking so. It had shaken like that all day, every time I brought it near the thing to feel if it was still on me. And I had felt to see if it was still on me every five minutes on the minute. The lining caught around it and I had to free it, but finally I got it out.

  He took it from me and examined it, curiously but noncommittally.

  “That’s just the way it looked in—when I saw it when I was asleep,” I quavered. “The same shape, the same color, the same design. It even weighs the same, it even—”

  He lowered his head a trifle, looked at me intently from under his brows, when he heard how my voice sounded. “You’re all in pieces, aren’t you?” he confirmed. He put his hand on my shoulder for a minute to steady it. “Don’t take it that way, don’t let it get you.”

  That didn’t help. Sympathy wasn’t what I wanted, I wanted explanation. “Cliff, you’ve got to help me. You don’t know what I’ve been through all day, I’ve been turned inside-out.”

  He weighed the key up and down. “Where’d you get this from, Vince? I mean, where’d you first get it from, before you dreamed about it?”

  I grabbed his one arm with both hands. “But don’t you understand what I’ve just been telling you? I didn’t have it before I dreamt about it. I never saw it before then. And then I wake up, and it turns real!”

  “And that goes for the button too?”

  I quirked my head.

  “You’re in bad shape over this, aren’t you? Well what is it that’s really got you going? It’s not the key and button and scratch, is it? Are you afraid the dream really happened, is that it?”

  By that I could see that he hadn’t understood until now, hadn’t really gotten me. Naturally it wasn’t just the tokens carried-over from the dream that had the life frightened out of me. It was the implication behind them. If it was just a key turned up in my pocket after I dreamed about it, why would I go to him? The hell with it. But if the key turned up real, then there was a mirrored closet-door somewhere to go with it. And if there was a closet to match it, then there was a body crammed inside it. Also real. Real dead. A body that had scratched me and tried to wring my neck before I killed it.

  I tried to tell him that. I was too weak to shake him, but I went through the motions. “Don’t you understand? There’s a door somewhere in this city right at this very minute, that this key belongs to! There’s a man propped up dead behind it! And I don’t know where; my God, I don’t know where, nor who he is, nor how or why it happened—only that—that I must have been there, I must have done it—or why would it come to my mi
nd like that in my sleep?”

  “You’re in a bad way.” He gave a short whistle through his clenched teeth. “Do you need a drink, Lil or no Lil! Come on, we’ll go someplace and get this thing out of your system.” He clutched me peremptorily by the arm.

  “But only coffee,” I faltered. “Let’s go where the lights are good and bright.”

  We went where there was so much gleam and so much dazzle even the flies walking around on the table cast long shadows.

  “Now we’ll go at this my way,” he said, licking the beer-foam off his upper lip. “Tell me the dream over again.”

  I told it.

  “I can’t get anything out of that.” He shook his head baffledly. “Did you know this girl, or face, or whatever it was?”

  I pressed the point of one finger down hard on the table. “No, now I don’t, but in the dream I did, and it made me broken-hearted to see her. Like she had double-crossed me or something.”

  “Well in the dream who was she, then?”

  “I don’t know; I knew her then, but now I don’t.”

  “Jese!” he said, swallowing more beer fast. “I should have made this whiskey with tabasco sauce! Well was she some actress you’ve seen on the screen lately, maybe? Or some picture you’ve seen in a magazine? Or maybe even some passing face you glimpsed in a crowd? All those things could happen.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know. I seemed to know her better than that; it hurt me to see her, to have her hate me. But I can’t carry her over into—now.”

  “And the man, the fellow or whoever he was?”

  “No, I couldn’t seem to see his face through the whole thing. I only saw it at the very end, after it was already too late. And then when the door started to open again, after I’d locked him in, it seemed as though I was going to find out something horrible—about him, I guess. But I woke up before there was time.”

  “And last of all, the place. You say nothing but doors all around you. Have you been in a place like that lately? Have you ever seen one? In a magazine illustration, in a story you read, in a movie?”

  “No. No. No.”

  “Well then let’s get away from the dream. Let’s leave it alone.” He flung his hand back and forth relievedly, as if clearing the air. “It was starting to get me myself. Now what’d you do last night—before this whole thing came up?”

  “Nothing. Just what I do every night. I left work at the usual time, had my meal at the usual place—”

  “Sure it wasn’t a welsh rarebit?”

  I answered his smile, but not light-heartedly. “A welsh rarebit is not responsible for that key. A locksmith is. Drop it on the table and hear it clash! Bite it between your teeth and chip them! And I didn’t have it when I went to bed last night.”

  He leaned toward me. “Now listen, Vince. There’s a very simple explanation for that key. There has to be. And whatever it is, it didn’t come to you in a dream. Either you were walking along, you noticed that key, picked it up because of its peculiar—”

  I semaphored both hands before my face. “No, I tried to sell myself that this morning; it won’t work. I have absolutely no recollection of ever having done that, at any time. I’d remember the key itself, even if I didn’t remember the incident of finding it.”

  “Are you sitting there trying to say you’ve never in your life forgotten a single object, once you’ve seen it the first time?”

  “No,” I said unwillingly.

  “You’d better not. Particularly a nondescript thing like a key—”

  “This isn’t a nondescript key, it’s a unique key. And I do say I never saw it before, never picked it up; it’s a strange key to me.”

  He spread his hands permissively. “All right, it don’t have to be that explanation. There’s a dozen-and-one other ways it could have gotten into your pocket without your knowledge. You might have hung the coat up under some shelf the key was lying on, and it dropped off and the open pocket caught it—”

  “The pockets of my topcoat have flaps. What’d it do, make a U-turn to get in under them?”

  “The flaps might have been left accidentally tucked-in, from the last time your hands were in your pockets. Or it may have fallen out of someone else’s coat hung up next to yours in a cloakroom, and been lying there on the floor, and someone came along, thought it belonged in your coat, put it back in—”

  “I shoved my hands in and out of those pockets a dozen times yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. Where was it then? It wasn’t in the pocket! But it was this morning. After I saw it clear as a photograph in my sleep during the night!”

  “Suppose it was in the pocket and your hand missed it—yesterday and the day-before and so on—until this morning? That would be physically possible, wouldn’t it?”

  I gave him a no on this; I had a right to. “It came up over my own key, it was the top one of the two, when I got them both out this morning. So if it was already in there last night, how could I have got my own key out—as I did when I came home—without bringing it up too? And last night I didn’t bring it up.”

  He waived that point. Maybe because I had him, maybe not. “All right, have it your way, let’s say that it wasn’t in your pocket last night. That still don’t prove that the dream itself was real.”

  “No?” I shrilled. “It gives it a damn good foundation-in-fact as far as I’m concerned!”

  “Listen, Vince, there’s no halfway business about these things. It’s either one thing or the other. Either you dream a thing or you don’t dream it, it really happens. You’re twenty-six years old, you’re not a kid. Don’t worry, you’d know it and you’d remember it damn plainly afterwards if you ever came to grips with a guy and he had you by the throat, like in this dream, and you rammed something into his back. I don’t take any stock in this stuff about people walking in their sleep and doing things without knowing it. They can walk a little ways off from their beds, maybe, but the minute anyone touches them or does something to stop them, they wake right up. They can’t be manhandled and go right on sleeping through it—”

  “I couldn’t have walked in my sleep, anyway. It was drizzling when I went to bed last night; the streets were only starting to dry off when I first got up this morning. I don’t own rubbers, and the soles of both my shoes were perfectly dry when I put them on.”

  “Don’t try to get away from the main point at issue. Have you any recollection at all, no matter how faint, of being out of your room last night, of grappling with a guy, of ramming something into him?”

  “No, all I have is a perfectly clear recollection of going to bed, dreaming I did all those things, and then waking up again.”

  He cut his hand short at me, to keep the button, key, and bruises from showing up again, I guess. “Then that’s all there is to it. Then it didn’t happen.” And he repeated stubbornly: “You either dream ’em or you do ’em. No two ways about it.”

  I ridged my forehead dissatisfiedly. “You haven’t helped me a bit, not a dime’s worth.”

  He was a little put out, maybe because he hadn’t. “Naturally not, not if you expected me to arrest you for murdering a guy in a dream. The arrest would have to take place in a dream too, and the trial and all the rest of it. And I’m off-duty when I’m dreaming. What do you think I am, a witch-doctor?”

  “How much?” I asked the counterman disgruntledly.

  “Seventeen cups of coffee—” he tabulated. It was two o’clock in the morning.

  “I’m going to sleep in the living-room at your place tonight,” I said to him on the way over. “I’m not going back to that room of mine till broad daylight! Don’t say anything to Lil about it, will you, Cliff?”

  “I should say not,” he agreed. “D’you think I want her to take you for bugs? You’ll get over this, Vince.”

  “First I’ll get to the bottom of it, then I’
ll get over it,” I concurred sombrely.

  * * *

  —

  I slept about an hour’s worth, but that was the fault of the seventeen cups of coffee more than anything else. The hour that I did sleep had no images in it, was no different than any other night’s sleep I’d had all my life. Until the night before; no better and no worse. He came in and he stood looking at me the next morning. I threw off the blanket they’d given me and sat up on the sofa.

  “How’d it go?” he asked half-secretively. On account of her, I suppose.

  I eyed him. “I didn’t have any more dreams, if that’s what you mean. But that has nothing to do with it. If I was convinced that was a dream, I would have gone home to my own room last night, even if I was going to have it over again twice as bad. But I’m not; I’m still not convinced, by a damn sight. Now are you going to help me or not?”

  He rocked back and forth on his feet. “What d’you want me to do?”

  How could I answer that coherently? I couldn’t. “You’re a detective. You’ve got the key. The button’s over in my room. You must have often had less than that to work with. Find out where they came from! Find out what they’re doing on me!”

  He got tough. He had my best interests at heart maybe, but he thought the thing to do was bark at me. “Now listen, cut that stuff out, y’hear? I dowanna hear any more about that key! I’ve got it, and I’m keeping it, and you’re not going to see it again! If you harp on this spooky stuff any more, I’ll help you all right—in a way you won’t appreciate. I’ll haul you off to see a doctor.”

  The scratch on my wrist had formed a scab, it was already about to come off. I freed it with the edge of my nail, then I blew the little sliver of dried skin off. And I gave him a long look, more eloquent than words. He got it, but he wouldn’t give in. Lil called in: “Come and get it, boys!”

  I left their house—and I was on my own, just like before I’d gone there. Me and my shadows. I stopped in at a newspaper advertising-bureau, and I composed an ad and told them I wanted it inserted in the real estate section. I told them to keep running it daily until further notice. It wasn’t easy to word. It took me the better part of an hour, and about three dozen blank forms. This ad: