Offbeat

by Richard Matheson

  “Well,” she said. “You certainly hit the jackpot this morning.”

  She looked right into Mr. Smalley’s dark eyes and she held on to the counter edge with bloodless fingers.

  When Mr. Smalley had left, she stood watching him for a moment as he walked across the square toward his car. Once he glanced back and she waved to him with a delicate flutter of her fingers.

  Then Miss Land drew down the window and turned away from it.

  Life Size

  The littler one was playing with her dollhouse this afternoon. Crinkled knees on rose bespattered rug, she fondled her ones, Molly, Fig and the Puppy Gruff.

  Molly is a boy doll. The littler one giggled when I dubbed him so. That is a girl’s name, she said. Hush, said I, who is to say?

  Fig is a black sambo rajah, jeweled and awesome. And the Puppy Gruff is the Puppy Gruff.

  Mother was sitting at the big furniture scraping on a hill of debts.

  She frowned at me squatting on a buttoned hassock admiring my daughter.

  The littler one was rearranging furniture, a blue-veined hand sliding a bathtub to the wall. You must not place a bathtub in the guestroom, I told her, the guests might float ducks in it. I flew a bit of breeze from my lips and the delicate hair wisps at her temple stirred golden. Pappa, said she with a shake.

  The furniture arrangement proved so distasteful that she swept her hand across the floor to brush it clean. The furniture bounced nicely on the rug. I think now, said I, that is some fine way to arrange furniture. Little lips pouting, priceless petulance.

  The distaff giant rose, the floor shook with her coming. I looked up and the far off eyes sprinkled ice dust on our heads.

  Get up! she cried. I lifted the piano with two fingers. First, I begged, we must return this.

  She bent over and slapped it spinning on the floor. Come here, in a loud way she said. And you, a finger spear pointing at my loved one’s heart, stay away from the house if you don’t appreciate it.

  Little head lowered, rising tears. You may play nicely with the house, I said and stood up way high. Mother stamp stamped to the table. I stamp stamped followed.

  This simply cannot go on, she gurgled, pushing the everest of bills to me. I am not hungry, I said. Ice dust upon me.

  Listen, Reg, she hissed so the littler one would hear worse, this simply is the end. Either you get out and work or I leave, with the child.

  Old tale. Old song. Old misery set to words. Take my child? Nonsense.

  I’ll get work tomorrow, I promised.

  Tomorrow, tomorrow I heard an echo from the valley of her throat. How many times have I heard that? How many times did Sal hear it? Tomorrow I said and walked away. That is not all, she cried but I kept on for the doorway.

  It is unbelievable the rapidity with which I shrank.

  Suddenly from as big as her, down, down.

  Whishhh the doorway far far up like a mountain tunnel. The huge chair noted and prepared to collapse its gargantua crimson on my tiny body. The sky shook, the cliff tottered miles above me.

  I flung up my arm and cried fear.

  Pain at my knees. Suddenly I was back again, sprawled across the chair. Pappa! sweet worried tones caressed my ears.

  Mother had such a look and such a trembling standing by the table.

  I rose with dignity and brushed off some dust not on me. I strode into the hall carefully. The house was slowly beginning to rock. The stairs were swelling, receding, in and out, like rolling waves carpeted and tacked.

  I held tight to the bannister. No sense being swept out the window and so to sea.

  I prisoned off my room and sat down uh! on my white bed. My feet raised up and placed so on the spread, I fell back.

  The pitching slacked off, my ship slid into calm waters. Oh Sal, I whispered, Sal who understood, Sal not here, Sal far away gone and never coming more.

  The clock whispered sleep and wake.

  I raised squarely up and was without trouble. The room, the hall, all in fine order, walls square, flat and firm, steady ceiling.

  I slid down the silent stairs. Ha ha was the chuckle as I swept past the bottom toe and kneeled before the living room. Murmurs in the kitchen, the way clear. Softly, softly. Hello there Fig old bedizened potentate. Molly.

  I began to crawl carefully, slowly.

  For a while, naturally, I got nowhere since I kept shrinking the farther I went. The room swelled bigger, bigger. Grotesque universe.

  Voices! Footsteps!

  I scurried to the brink of the rug meaning to slip quickly over the edge and crouch in a hairy black cavern.

  Reg! voice in the distance, crashing from the sky. I could have sworn I was out of sight.

  Reg! the thunder roared again.

  I wept with fury biting at the roses for their eyes so keen. I raised a look through binocular tears.

  The littler one, clever darling, made as though frightened. Sweet conspirator! Mother will not know my plan from her.

  I started climbing up the red chair, a long haul without a rope.

  Fantastic hands reached down to smother me in hot greasy palms. I clawed at them, angular sweating monstrosities.

  The room wavered, so like it to do that.

  I stood up, ready to die for my secret, let the black waves dash on me. The room distorted, cooled and shrank. I held up my hands, screaming, ready for the ceiling to plunge down on me.

  But first the tower of me crashed an awful way far down on the rug plateau. I saw roses in my eyes when I became unknowing.

  I woke in my bed feeling quiet. Someone was sitting across the room.

  Come here Sal, I asked so gently. Let me touch your cold grey lips, let me see the clay that stains your eyes.

  It was only a white tower that came to me as I slowly drowned in the lake folds of my bed.

  Foul lifeguard it reached down and tugged me out. My wrist was enveloped by cold serpents. I heard hmmm at the tower gate. I squinted and saw it was actually a giant whose every pore was a gaping pit.

  I turned my head away and was sick it was so ugly and horrible.

  I fell away to black things soon.

  But before it, I thought this and final too.

  When that bleak tower is gone or at slumber I will creep out, fly down the steps of mountain side and run across the rose strewn plain to my home.

  In the door, they will leave it open for me. Up, up, up the pretty stairs, two at a time I think.

  Into the bed creeping to hear them whisper below, my friends.

  Waiting for Sal to tuck me in and kiss me so, goodnight my dear. Sleep.

  Dream on dream within the smooth and creamy silent walls.

  The pendulum stops.

  That Was Yesterday

  He rolled over on the bed and sat up. A grunt pressed out from his stomach as he bent over and fumbled for his shoes. He found them after running his fingers over the dusty floor, put them on and tied the laces as if it were the first time.

  Then, with a shuddering sigh, he straightened up and stared at the window until the cloud before his eyes lifted. He pushed himself up from the bed and stood, swaying back and forth.

  He slid trouser legs over the worn shoes. The ragged tail of his shirt was tucked in. Wrinkled and spattered with hashhouse spots, the coat hung limply on his thin shoulders.

  Picking up his cap he plodded to the door and closed it silently behind him. He adjusted the cap as he moved down the hall to the stairs. He went down the insides of the steps so they wouldn’t squeak, opened the front door only wide enough to slip through so the hanging bell would not sound out his departure. He looked around carefully before descending the wet porch steps to the sidewalk.

  Even though he pulled up his collar, the raindrops rolled under it and down his back. He shuddered, moving closer to the storefronts. The awnings were still rolled up.

  He stopped a second to look around. A policeman turned the distant corner and started up the block, head bent into the cold wind.


  He scuttled down to an alley and into its murky length. At its end, he clambered over a wooden fence and dropped heavily into a yard piled high with tin cans and refuse. There he crouched down behind a pile of old newspapers and closed his eyes.

  The rain soaked through his coat and shirt. It dripped off the end of his nose, into his mouth. The taste of it was foul from the brim of his dirty cap. He pressed both hands under his armpits and bent over, shivering. He fell back, sitting in the muddy grass, and stared vacantly at the drops bouncing off his kneecaps.

  It happened so fast it hardly seemed real. Thoughts about it were like dripping wax from a candle, slow and tortured.

  A surprise. The young newlywed home early from the office. Pushing open the door with a smile. Sudden fingers pulling the stomach against the backbone. Blind fury.

  Her, sprawled out on the couch, white and sordid. The man standing over her and staring openmouthed at the doorway. The horrible shaking of his uncontrollable limbs.

  A long black moment. Only yesterday and yet the memory of it is shapeless in a grey void of thought. A scuffle, a scream, something warm spurting across his chest. Crouching against the wall holding a red-bladed knife. A dead man on the floor.

  Her, screaming, kneeling beside the man and trying to push her long fingers against the wounds. The knife falling to the floor. Her, burning in horror, clutching at her throat. The blood running down between her breasts, a thin scarlet stream across her white stomach. Her screams again and the sight of her running into the bedroom and slamming the door.

  Vague memories of stairs, sidewalks, buildings, passing beneath and above. A city running past to hide him in its depths.

  Alone in the dark rented room. The shirt tearing hair from his chest where the blood had dried. Washing. Throwing himself on the bed and finding the quiet pain of sleep. Yesterday.

  No one came. He straightened up with a groan. He slipped through the mud and, wearily, placed a box against the fence. A splinter ripped open his finger as he slid down the other side. The blood splattered on the wet sidewalk, faded under the cleansing rain.

  He wrapped his handkerchief around the torn skin and went back to the street. The policeman was gone.

  He crossed over to a small café which sat dimly behind rain streaked windows. He looked in and then entered.

  The coffee was set before him. He drizzled sugar into it and stirred. The thin line of warmth ran down his throat and settled comfortingly in his stomach. He drank again and the cup was empty. He asked for a second and drank it as quickly. Then he sat looking at the third cup. It was light brown and creamy with shiny circles floating on top. The light brown of someone’s hair. Someone who had lived only in the mind. An impostor under flesh, hiding a blackness under white grace. Would her tomorrows be as barren, her yesterdays as empty?

  Only yesterday. Already it seemed a century.

  He sipped the coffee and closed his eyes until the drumming on the window stopped. Then he slid off the stool and stood in the doorway looking up and down the street.

  Cap pulled down over one eye, he shuffled across to the newsstand and bought the three morning papers. He put them under his coat as he walked slowly, head bent, back to the rooming house.

  The bell made no sound as he slid through the doorway. The stairs hardly murmured as he stepped gingerly along the wall. He opened the door to his room quietly and closed it. He turned on the light, threw off his soggy cap and coat and threw himself on the bed. Then he read through the papers.

  There was no mention of the crime.

  How could that be? There was nothing subtle about it. In the struggle furniture had toppled over. Her screams had run out over the crashing. And she must have called the police.

  Maybe it was a trap to make him return. He would not be so foolish.

  But this endless waiting. They would probably arrest him sooner or later. Could he bear the endless torture before they found him?

  Was it possible she hadn’t told the police?

  He lay back on the grimy pillow.

  What a stupid idea! Hadn’t he seen the dirt of her? Didn’t he know that her first desire would be for revenge?

  He closed his eyes and listened to the methodical clock and the rain, beating again on the window, like tiny waves on a glassy shore.

  In the evening he got up before it was dark. He left the house, ate, and bought the two evening newspapers. He read them carefully. There was nothing in them.

  There were tears in his eyes as he read. Maybe she didn’t tell them. Maybe it was a last gesture.

  He twisted his head in rage. No! She was dirty, foul, corrupt. Could he ever forget that vacuous smile, that sensual leer changed to ugly fright at the sight of him?

  She had told. No fear of that. And now they were waiting for him. Waiting as a snake waits, in slimy patience, until the bird wanders close enough. Then, the stunning fangs, the slithering body stretching over the corpse.

  He ripped all the papers to shreds and threw them on the floor. Then he fell back heavily on the bed, looking at the ceiling. Soon his eyes closed and he dreamt he was swinging over a pit while blood dripped on his eyes from above.

  The sunlight in his eyes woke him up. His finger was infected. He pressed out the milky drops and replaced the dirty handkerchief.

  No one saw him leave the house. He started up the street finding no beauty in the weather. Breakfast was coffee and doughnuts at the café. Then he bought the morning papers and started back to his room.

  Halfway back he saw a policeman coming toward him. The sunlight glinted off the shiny badge and blinded him. The brown club moved in a blur around the policeman’s hand.

  He stumbled and fell against a store window. His legs would not move, his arms were heavy and dead. The papers slid onto the ground. They knew! He was caught!

  He shuddered when the policeman’s hand touched him. He opened his eyes and stared.

  “Sick, Granpa?” asked the policeman with a smile.

  He couldn’t speak. He nodded and tried to smile when the policeman handed him the papers and turned away. He stood there, face twitching, watching the policeman walk up the street. He clutched the papers against him.

  Then he rushed down the street from shadow to shadow.

  Flinging open the door to his room he threw down the papers and fell against the door, closing it. He slid to the floor and read all the papers, mouth hanging open, the breaths shaking his scrawny hands.

  There was nothing about it in the paper.

  The fools! The idiotic fools!

  He lay back against the door and could not keep the blinding tears from his eyes.

  Only yesterday. But it seemed so long. Maybe she didn’t tell them yet.

  It was only yesterday.

  Afterword

  Writing an afterword to this collection of my stories will be more a feat of memory than any variety of philosophical analysis.

  Let me be frank. These stories—with one exception—were written a long time ago. A long, long time ago.

  Not that I denounce their age and/or quality. Consequently, some were published in magazines and the one “contemporary” story in Bill Nolan’s edited The Bradbury Chronicles.

  Still, the majority of them were written when I was very young and I have no recollection of where the ideas came from or why I wrote them as I did. One, of course, was an homage to Ray Bradbury. Another was the opening section to a novel on Spiritualism.

  When it became apparent that the ultimate manuscript of the novel—an account in detail of each of the three Nielson children—would likely amount to something in the neighborhood of 2,000 pages, I chickened out and never finished it.

  I did the same fold on a novel entitled The Link. It, too, seemed headed for a 2,000-page length. This time my agent cautioned me that a novel of such bulk would be so costly that readers would be loathe to spend the money. So another multi-thousand pager bit the dust. This one was about all aspects of parapsychology.

  I did win
one semi-victory on a lengthy novel when Gauntlet Press published Hunger and Thirst. I only had to wait half a century to get that one published in a limited edition and that only took place through the thoughtful intervention of my son Richard.

  So what am I to do regarding this Afterword to my collection?

  Having re-read the stories, I can only comment on them individually with the hope that some glimmer of memory will take me back to the advent of their creation.

  RELICS, published in later years by Richard Chizmar in his magazine Cemetery Dance, is a story which attempts to spin around the banality of its setting and character behavior to conclude the story with what we writers like to call a “zapper.” Hopefully, that zapper has some sociological value. Let the reader decide.

  BLUNDER BUSS is one of my not-too-often attempts to write a humorous story. It is a story of a man’s sexual fantasy, not at all uncommon in the male gender. And, again, hopefully, the zapper comes—unexpectedly and, even more hopefully, amusingly.

  AND NOW I’M WAITING has a history more unique than the other stories.

  I wrote it as a dead serious account. When the concept was submitted to The Twilight Zone (I don’t recall if there was a completed story with it) it was rejected as being, I presume, too grim.

  So I turned it into a comedy and titled it “A World of His Own.” It starred Keenan Wynn and permitted me to do what no other writer on the series ever did—make my zapper be the literal disappearance of Rod Serling him-self.

  THE LAST BLAH IN THE ETC. A dread secret revealed. The last page of the manuscript—ancient, of course—had disappeared. I seemed to remember what I had in mind and added two words to the ending to hint at my intention. A trifle enigmatic but a little thought will, I think, reveal the story’s denouement.

  I have never been in the habit of letting any story’s conclusion be in question.

  I will be interested to see if you get its point. Maybe everyone will come up with a different one. That would be intriguing.

  PHONE CALL FROM ACROSS THE STREET. I don’t remember getting the idea but I certainly think its meaning is clear.