American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56

by Gary K. Wolfe

  Standing once more, he started around the top of the refrigerator to see if there were anything he might use. He found the newspaper.

  It was folded and propped against the cylindrical coil case. Its lettered faces were covered with dust and part of the sink’s leaking had splashed water across it, blotting the letters and eating through the cheap paper. He saw the large letters OST and knew it was a copy of the New York Globe-Post, the paper that had done his story—at least as much of it as he had been able to endure.

  He looked at the dusty paper, remembering the day Mel Hammer had come to the apartment and made the offer.

  Marty had mentioned Scott’s mysterious affliction to a fellow Kiwani, and from there the news had drifted, ripple by ripple, into the city.

  Scott refused the offer, despite the fact that they needed the money desperately. Although the Medical Center had completed the tests free of charge, there was still a sizable bill for the first series of examinations. There was the five hundred owed to Marty, and the other bills they’d accumulated through the long, hard winter—the complete winter wardrobe for all of them, the cost of fuel oil, the extra medical bills because none of them had been physically equipped to face an Eastern winter after living so long in Los Angeles.

  But Scott had been in what he now called his period of furies—a time when he experienced an endless and continuously mounting anger at the plight he was in. He’d refused the newspaper offer with anger. No, thank you, but I don’t care to be exposed to the morbid curiosity of the public. He flared up at Lou when she didn’t support his decision as eagerly as he thought she should have, saying, “What would you like me to do—turn myself into a public freak to give you your security?”

  Erring, off-target anger; he’d known it even as he spoke. But anger was burning in him. It drove him to depths of temper he had never plumbed before. Strengthless temper, temper based on fear alone.

  Scott turned away from the newspaper and went back to the rope. Lowering himself over the edge with an angry carelessness, he began sliding down the rope, using his hands and feet. The white cliff of the refrigerator blurred before his eyes as he descended.

  And the anger he felt now was only a vestigial remnant of the fury he’d lived with constantly in the past; fury that made him lash out incontinently at anyone he thought was mocking him. . .

  He remembered the day Terry had said something behind his back; something he thought he heard. He remembered how, no taller than Beth, he’d whirled on her and told her that he’d heard what she’d said.

  Heard what? she asked. Heard what you said about me! I didn’t say anything about you. Don’t lie to me, I’m not deaf! Are you calling me a liar? Yes, I’m calling you a liar! I don’t have to listen to talk like that! You do when you decide to talk about me behind my back! I think we’ve had just about enough of your screaming around here. Just because you’re Marty’s brother— Sure, sure, you’re the boss’s wife, you’re the big cheese around here! Don’t you talk to me like that!

  And on and on, shrill and discordant and profitless.

  Until Marty, grim, soft-spoken, called him into the office, where Scott had stood in front of the desk, glaring at his brother like a belligerent dwarf.

  “Kid, I don’t like to say it,” Marty told him, “but maybe— till they get you fixed up—it’d be better if you stayed home. Believe me, I know what you’re going through, and I don’t blame you, not a bit. But . . . well, you can’t concentrate on work when you’re . . .”

  “So I’m being fired.”

  “Oh, come on, kid,” Marty said. “You’re not being fired. You’ll still be on salary. Not as much, of course—I can’t afford that—but enough to keep you and Lou going. This’ll be over soon, kid. And—well, Christ, the GI loan’ll be coming through any day now anyway, and then—”

  Scott’s feet thudded on the top of the wicker table. Without pausing, he started across the wide expanse, lips set tightly in the thick blond wreathing of his beard.

  Why did he have to see that newspaper and go off on another fruitless journey to the past? Memory was such a worthless thing, really. Nothing it dealt with was attainable. It was concerned with phantom acts and feelings, with all that was uncapturable except in thought. It was without satisfaction. Mostly it hurt. . .

  He stood at the edge of the tabletop, wondering how he was going to get down to the hanging strip. He stood indecisively, shifting from leg to leg, wriggling the toes of the lifted foot gingerly. His feet were getting cold again. The ache in his right leg was returning, too; he’d almost forgotten it while he was collecting crumbs, the constant movement loosening and warming him. And his throat was getting sore again.

  He walked behind the paint can whose handle he had grabbed before and, bracing his back against it, pushed. The can didn’t move. Turning around, he planted his feet firmly and pushed with all his strength. The can remained fixed. Scott walked around it, breathing hard with strain. With great effort, he was able to draw the handle out slightly so that it protruded over the edge of the table.

  He rested for a moment, then swung out over the space and dangled there until his searching feet found the strip and pressed down on it.

  Cautiously he put one hand on the tabletop. Then, after a moment of feeling for balance, he let go of the paint-can handle and lowered himself quickly. His feet slipped off the ledge, but his convulsively thrusting arms caught hold of it and he clambered back on.

  After a few seconds he leaped across to the spar arrangement.

  The descent along the rod-spaced incline was simple; too simple to prevent the return of memories. As he slid and edged down the length of the incline, he thought of the afternoon he’d come home from the shop after the talk with Marty.

  He remembered how still the apartment was, Lou and Beth out shopping. He remembered going into the bedroom and sitting on the edge of the bed for a long time, staring down at his dangling legs.

  He didn’t know how long it had been before he’d looked up and seen a suit of his old clothes hanging on the back of the door. He’d looked at it, then got up and gone over to it. He’d had to stand on a chair to reach it. For a moment he held the dragging weight of it in his arms. Then, not knowing exactly why, he pulled the jacket off the hanger and put it on.

  He stood in front of the full-length mirror, looking at himself.

  That’s all he did at first, just stood looking—at his hands, lost deep in the sagging hollow of the dark sleeves; at the hem of the coat, far below his calves; at the way the coat hung around him like a tent. It didn’t strike him then; the disparity was too severe. He only stared at himself, his face blank.

  Then it did strike him, as if for the first time.

  It was his own coat he wore.

  A wheezing giggle puffed out his cheeks. It disappeared. Silence while he gaped at his reflection.

  He snickered hollowly at the child playing grownup. His chest began to shake with restrained laughs. They sounded like sobs.

  He couldn’t hold them back. They poured up his throat and pushed out between shaking lips. Sobbing laughter burst out against the mirror. He felt his body trembling with it. The room began to resound with his taut, shrill laughter.

  He looked at the mirror again, tears raining down his cheeks. He did a little dance step and the coat puffed out, the sleeve ends flapping. Screeching with a deranged appreciation, he flailed spastic blows against his legs, doubled over to ease the pain in his stomach. His laughter came in short, explosive, throat-catching bursts. He could hardly stand.

  I’m funny!

  He swung the sleeve again and flopped over suddenly on his side, laughing and kicking at the floor with his shoes, the thumping sounds making him even more hysterical. He twisted around on the floor, limbs thrashing, head rolling from side to side, the choked laughter pealing from his lips, until he was too weak to laugh. Then he lay there on his back, motionless, gasping for breath, his face wet with tears, his right foot still twitching. I’m funny.<
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  And he thought, quite calmly it seemed, about going into the bathroom and getting his razor blade and cutting his wrists open. He really wondered why he went on lying there, looking up at the ceiling, when it would solve everything if he went into the bathroom and got a razor blade and—

  He slid down the rope-thick thread to the shelf of the wicker table. He shook the thread until the stick came loose and fell. He fastened it again and started down toward the floor.

  It was strange; he still didn’t know why he hadn’t committed suicide. Surely the hopelessness of his situation warranted it. Yet, although he had often wished he could do it, something had always stopped him.

  It was difficult to say whether he regretted this failure to end his life. Sometimes it seemed as if it didn’t matter one way or the other, except in a vague, philosophical way; but what philosopher had ever shrunk?

  His feet touched the cold floor, and quickly he gathered up his sandals and put them on—the sandals he had made of string. That was better. Now to drag the package to his sleeping place. Then he could strip off his wet robe and lie in the warmth, resting and eating. He ran to the package, anxious to get it over with.

  The package was so heavy that he could move it only slowly. He pushed it a dozen yards, then stopped and rested, sitting on it. After he got his breath, he stood up and pushed it some more—past the two massive tables, past the coiled hose, past the lawn mower and the huge ladder, across the wide, lightpatched plain toward the water heater.

  The last twenty-five yards he moved backwards, bent over at the waist, grunting as he dragged his bundle of food. Just a few more minutes and he’d be warm and comfortable on his bed, fed and sheltered. Teeth clenched in suddenly joyous effort, he jerked the bundle along to the foot of the cement block. Life was still worth struggling for. The simplest of physical pleasures could make it so. Food, water, warmth. He turned happily.

  He cried out.

  The giant spider was hanging across the top edge of the block, waiting for him.

  For a single moment their eyes met. He stood frozen at the foot of the cement block, staring up in heart-stilled horror.

  Then the long black legs stirred, and with a strangled groan Scott lunged into one of the two passages cut through the block. As he started running along the damp tunnel, he heard the spider drop heavily to the floor behind him.

  It’s not fair! his mind screamed in desolate fury.

  There was time for no more thought than that. Everything was swallowed in the savage maw of panic. The pain in his leg was gone, his exhaustion was washed away. Only terror remained.

  He leaped out through the opening on the other side of the cement block and cast back a glance at the shadowy lurching of the spider in the tunnel. Then, with a sucked-in breath, he started racing across the floor toward the fuel tank. There was no use trying to reach the log pile. The spider would overtake him long before he could make it.

  He sped toward the big split carton under the tank, not knowing what he would do when he got there, only instinctively heading for shelter. There were clothes in the carton. Maybe he could burrow under them, out of the black widow’s reach.

  He didn’t look back now; there was no need to. He knew the great swollen body of the spider was wobbling erratically over the cement, carried by the long black legs. He knew that it was only because one of those legs was missing that he had any hope of reaching the carton first.

  He ran through viscid squares of light, sandals thudding, robe flapping about his body. Air scorched rawly down his throat, his legs pumped wildly. The fuel tank loomed over him.

  He darted into the vast shadow of it, the spider skimming the floor less than five yards behind. With a grunt Scott leaped off the cement and, grabbing hold of a hanging string, dragged himself up, then swung in feet first through the opening in the side of the carton.

  He landed in a limb-twisting heap on the soft pile of clothes. As he started up he heard the rasping of the spider’s legs up the carton’s side. He shoved to his feet but lost his balance on the yielding cloth and fell. Sprawling, he saw the black, legfluttering bulk of the spider appear in the V-shaped opening. It lunged through.

  With a sob, Scott pushed up, then fell again on the uneven hill of clothes. The hill gave twice; once under his weight, again under the impact of the spider’s wriggling drop. It spurted through the shadows at him.

  There was no time to struggle to his feet. He shoved desperately with his legs and sent himself flailing backward. He flopped heavily again, hands clawing for an opening between the clothes. There was none. The spider was almost on him now.

  A high-pitched whining flooded in his throat. Scott flung himself back again as one of the spider’s legs fell heavily across his ankle. He grunted in shock as he fell into the open sewing box, hands still groping. The huge spider jumped down and clambered over his legs. He screamed.

  Then his hand closed over cold metal. The pin! With a sucking gasp, he kicked back again, dragging up the pin with both hands. As the spider leaped, he drove the pin like a spear at its belly. He felt the pin shudder in his grip under the weight of the partially impaled creature.

  The spider leaped back off the point. It landed yards away on the clothes, then, after a second’s hesitation, rushed at him again. Scott pushed up on his left knee, right leg back as a supporting brace, the pinhead cradled against his hip, his arms rigidly tensed for the second impact.

  Again the spider hit the pinpoint. Again it sprang back, one of its flailing spiny legs raking skin off Scott’s left temple.

  “Die!” he heard himself scream suddenly. “Die! Die!”

  It did not die. It stirred restlessly on the clothes a few yards away as if it were trying to understand why it couldn’t reach its prey. Then suddenly it leaped at him again.

  This time it had barely touched the pinpoint before it stopped and scuttled backward. Scott kept staring at it fixedly, his body remaining in its tense crouch, the heavy pin wavering a little in his grip, but always pointing at the spider. He could still feel the hideous clambering weight of it across his legs, the flesh-ripping slash of its leg. He squinted to distinguish its black form from the shadows.

  He didn’t know how long he remained in that position. The transition was unnoticeable. Suddenly, magically, there were only the shadows.

  A confused sound stirred in his throat. He stood up on palsied legs and looked around. Across the cellar the oil burner roared into life and, heart pounding jaggedly, he twisted around in a panic, thinking that the spider was going to leap on him from behind.

  He kept circling there for a long time, the weight of the lancelike pin dragging down his arms. Finally it dawned on him that the spider had gone away.

  A great wave of relief and exhaustion broke over him. The pin seemed made of lead, and it fell from his hands and clattered down on the wooden bottom of the box. His legs gave way and he slipped down into a twisted heap, head fallen back against the pin that had saved his life.

  For a while he lay there in limp, contented depletion. The spider was gone. He’d chased it away.

  It was not too long, however, before the knowledge that the spider was still alive dampened all contentment. It might be waiting outside for him, ready to spring as soon as he came out. It might be back under the water heater again, waiting for him there.

  He rolled over slowly on his stomach and pressed his face against his arms. What had he accomplished, after all? He was still virtually at the spider’s mercy. He couldn’t carry the pin everywhere he went, and in a day or so he might not be able to carry it at all.

  And even if (he didn’t believe it for a second) the spider would be too frightened to attack him again, there was still the food that would be gone in two days, still the increasing difficulties in getting to the water, still the constant altering of his clothes to be made, still the impossibility of escaping the cellar, still—worst of all, always there, constantly nagging—the dread of what was going to happen to him between Satu
rday night and Sunday morning.

  He struggled to his feet and groped around until he found the hinged cover of the box. He pulled it over and lowered it into place, then sank back into the darkness. What if I smother? he thought. He didn’t care.

  He’d been running since it had all started. Running physically, from the man and the boys and the cat and the bird and the spider, and—a far worse kind of flight—running mentally. Running from life, from his problems and his fears; retreating, backtracking, facing nothing, yielding, giving in, surrendering.

  He still lived, but was his living considered, or only an instinctive survival? Yes, he still struggled for food and water, but wasn’t that inevitable if he chose to go on living. What he wanted to know was this: Was he a separate, meaningful person; was he an individual? Did he matter? Was it enough just to survive?

  He didn’t know; he didn’t know. It might be that he was a man and trying to face reality. It might also be that he was a pathetic fraction of a shadow, living only out of habit, impulse-driven, moved but never moving, fought but never fighting.

  He didn’t know. He slept, curled up and shivering, no bigger than a pearl, and he didn’t know.

  Chapter Seven

  He stood up and listened carefully. The cellar was still. The spider must have gone. Surely, if it were still intent on killing him, it would have ventured into the carton again. He must have been asleep for hours.

  He grimaced, swallowed, as he realized that his throat hurt again. He was thirsty, hungry. Did he dare go back to the water heater? He blew out a hissing breath. There was no question. It had to be done.

  He felt around until his hands closed over the thick, icy shaft of the pin. He picked it up. It was heavy. Amazing that he had been able to handle it so well. Fright, probably. He lifted the pin in both hands, then shifted it to his right side and held it there. It dragged at his arm muscles as he climbed out of the sewing box and moved up the shifting hill of clothes toward the opening in the side of the carton. If the spider appeared, he could easily grab the pin with both hands and use it as he had before. It gave him the first definite sense of physical security he had had in weeks.