by Anthology
It was a little after 2 P.M. when they heard the gun fight. Ben thought there were ten shots fired, but Carolyn counted twelve. After a short pause Ben started to the scene. They were headed for an old barn on the end of Alice Street, called the Crab Shack. It sat near the water’s edge; in fact the back side of the building was on stilts above the bay. Local fishermen tie up and sell crabs and shrimp from the structure. A dock alongside the barn ran out into the bay about twenty yards and Ben saw several small boats tied to it. Everything seemed quiet and normal. On the far side of the barn was a gravel parking lot, at first glance it looked empty, but as his headlights swung around, they lit the scene. Two cars were parked close to the old barn. One car was a black Nissan and the other was a blue Corvette. He could see two bodies on the ground between the cars. A third body was laid over the hood of the corvette, and the fourth looked to be slumped over the steering wheel of the Nissan. Ben jammed the car into park and jumped out his door. He raced to the back of the Nissan and took a look inside. It was dark but with his headlights lighting the scene he saw a sports duffel bag in the back seat. Between him and the car door a small black man lay dead on the gravel. Blood soaked his white shirt, he had been shot twice. Still clutching a small gun, his open eyes stared blankly into the night.
Stepping over the body Ben grabbed the handle and opened the car door. He heaved the duffel out and set it next to the body only long enough to pull the zipper an inch or two and see money inside. Satisfied, he grabbed the straps and ran back to his car, tossing it into the back seat.
“Hurry! Go!” Caroline was urging him. He jumped into his seat and grabbed the gearshift, but some movement caught his eye. As he glanced up a shot rang out and punched a small hole through his windshield.
“Hurry! Go!” Caroline commanded again. Ben threw the car into reverse and hit the gas. Gravel sprayed from the tires as the car jerked around. From between the cars one of the drug dealers had gotten to his feet. It was the guy from the hood of the Corvette. Ben could see he had been shot more than once, his shirt was covered with blood and his pants were soaked as well. Even with the injuries, he was on his feet and stumbling in his direction. Ben jammed the car into drive and headed out of the lot. Just as he hit the solid pavement of the street, the side window of the Taurus exploded into a thousand chips and Caroline screamed.
“I’m shot!” She exclaimed.
Speeding back toward town Ben looked at his wife. Pale and clearly in pain, she held her hand over the right side of her chest. Blood slowly oozed from between her fingers. She rocked and grimaced as tears flowed from her eyes.
“How could I have gotten you into this? I should have never let you come.” He apologized. The car was racing near 80 mph through the empty downtown streets. He ran the lights and shot over the Hillsborough River Bridge back onto Bayshore Boulevard. Just ahead was the turnoff for Tampa General Hospital. He headed for the ramp.
“No, no, take me to our hospital.” Caroline pleaded.
Their home was almost mile down the road. “Can you make it?” Ben asked, “Are you sure?”
She nodded as the wind ripped through the shattered window and blew her hair. Ben could smell the salty iron scent of blood, but he aimed his car home and pressed the gas to the floor. Her pale skin glistened with sweat as every streetlight raced by. She coughed once and blood sprayed the windshield as they pulled into the yard.
Ben was out of the car and to her side in an instant. He flung the door open and started to pick her out of the vehicle when he realized it was too late. She fell from the car with lifeless wide eyes. Her whole right side was covered with blood. She was gone. Ben fell to his knees, horrified and ashamed, and clung to his wife. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he realized what he had done. His temples throbbed as he strained a muffled curse at himself. He couldn’t lose her, he thought, and he hung to her for a long time.
Sept. 1
“What do you mean it’s September 1st?” She asked. It took her a few moments to get her thoughts together. She was still recovering from the night of celebration. “Yesterday was the 25th.”
Ben held up the paper. It was the September first edition. “I’m still trying to put it together myself.” He said. “According to my log book,” Ben had collected all of his notes and journal. All the documents were scattered around the table where he sat. “We’ve lost our recent memory.”
“Huh?” Carolyn questioned as she lifted her hung-over body out of the lounger and stumbled to the table. She gently took a seat. Her head pounded and her whole body trembled and ached. She hadn’t partied like that in years. She wasn’t as young as she used to be. “What’s going on?” She asked.
“All I know for sure is that the connection is broken and we’ve lost six days of memory.” Carolyn glanced at the garage and finally noticed that the humming of the machine was absent.
Ben handed her the September 1st issue of the Tampa Tribune. “What the—I remember we made a connection and then it all goes black.”
“Look here,” Ben handed her a log book. Written in his handwriting was an account of the evening of the first connection. It was exactly as she remembered. She turned the pages and found five additional daily entries. “They came across to our reality?” She asked, reading the entries.
“Apparently they did. They were five days ahead of us, and that span of time has something to do with our memory loss.”
Carolyn was reading the log, “What’s this about money?”
“They came back here the evening we started the machine. They were going to help us gamble ourselves out of debt, but we never did it.”
Carolyn glanced over the bet sheets and odds. “What happened?”
“This,” Ben said as he handed her another newspaper.
Carolyn read the headline and skimmed the article. “How did that affect our plans,” she asked.
Ben smiled and gestured to his side where there was a black duffel bag. “It wasn’t a million dollar drug deal like the story says. It was a four million dollar deal. They took the money and split it with us!” Carolyn stared at the duffel not understanding what he was saying, and then slowly pieced together what he was saying.
It was only three o’clock in the afternoon but Ben was home from work. He pulled his new convertible Thunderbird into the garage. The transformers that once hung in the corner were now gone, as was the entire machine. Strone Industries sold Bens research to the department of defense and made a tidy profit. Ben was part of the deal. His new job as a consultant for the government allowed him to work close to home, at the Macdill Air Force Base. Ben loved the ten mile drive down Bayshore Boulevard to the base. The bay view was beautiful, with sailboats and the occasional dolphin arching into the waves. With the warm wind in his hair he didn’t have a care in the world. The black duffel bag had been emptied into a small safe that sat in the corner of his bedroom closet. His stress level was down, his debts were paid off, and his wife loved him.
Life was good.
SUCH INTERESTING NEIGHBORS
Jack Finney
I can’t honestly say I knew from the start that there was something queer about the Hellenbeks. I did notice some strange things right away, and wondered about them, but I shrugged them off. They were nice people, I liked them, and everyone has a few odd little tricks.
We were watching from our sun-parlor windows the day they arrived; not snooping or prying, you understand, but naturally we were curious. Nell and I are pretty sociable and we were hoping a couple around our own ages would move into the new house next door.
I was just finishing breakfast—it was a Saturday and I wasn’t working—and Nell was running the vacuum cleaner over the sun-parlor rug. I heard the vacuum shut off, and Nell called out, “Here they are, Al!” and I ran in and we got our first look at the Hellenbeks.
He was helping her from a cab, and I got a good look at him and his wife. They seemed to be just about our ages, the man maybe thirty-two or so and his wife in her middle twentie
s. She was rather pretty, and he had a nice, agreeable kind of face.
“Newlyweds?” Nell said, a little excited.
“Why?”
“Their clothes are all brand-new. Even the shoes. And so’s the bag.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right.” I watched for a second or so, then said, “Foreigners, too, I think,” showing Nell I was pretty observant myself.
“Why do you think so?”
“He’s having trouble with the local currency.” He was, too. He couldn’t seem to pick out the right change, and finally he held out his hand and let the driver find the right coins.
But we were wrong on both counts. They’d been married three years, we found out later, had both been born in the States, and had lived here nearly all their lives.
Furniture deliveries began arriving next door within half an hour; everything new, all bought from local merchants. We live in San Rafael, California, in a neighborhood of small houses. Mostly young people live here, and it’s a friendly, informal place. So after a while I got into an old pair of flannels and sneakers and wandered over to get acquainted and lend a hand if I could, and I cut across the two lawns. As I came up to their house, I heard them talking in the living room. “Here’s a picture of Truman,” he said, and I heard a newspaper rattle.
“Truman,” she said, kind of thoughtfully. “Let’s see now; doesn’t Roosevelt come next?”
“No. Truman comes after Roosevelt.”
“I think you’re wrong, dear,” she said. “It’s Truman, then Roosevelt, then—”
When my feet hit their front steps, the talk stopped. At the door I knocked and glanced in; they were sitting on the living-room floor, and Ted Hellenbek was just scrambling to his feet. They’d been unpacking a carton of dishes and there was a bunch of wadded-up old newspapers lying around, and I guess they’d been looking at those. Ted came to the door. He’d changed to a T-shirt, slacks and moccasins, all brand-new.
“I’m Al Lewis from next door,” I said. “Thought maybe I could give you a hand.”
“Glad to know you.” He pushed the door open, then stuck out his hand. “I’m Ted Hellenbek,” and he grinned in a nice friendly way. His wife got up from the floor, and Ted introduced us. Her name was Ann.
Well, I worked around with them the rest of the morning, helping them unpack things, and we got the place into pretty good order. While we were working, Ted told me they’d been living in South America—he didn’t say where or why—and that they’d sold everything they had down there, except the clothes they traveled in and a few personal belongings, rather than pay shipping expenses. That sounded perfectly reasonable and sensible, except that a few days later Ann told Nell their house in South America had burned down and they’d lost everything.
Maybe half an hour after I arrived, some bedding was delivered—blankets, pillows, linen, stuff like that. Ann picked up the two pillows, put cases on them, and turned toward the bedroom. Now, it was broad daylight, the bedroom door was closed, and it was made of solid wood. But Ann walked straight into that door and fell. I couldn’t figure out how she came to do it; it was as though she expected the door to open by itself or something. That’s what Ted said, too, going over to help her up. “Be careful, honey,” he said, and laughed a little, making a joke of it. “You’ll have to learn, you know, that doors won’t open themselves.”
Around eleven thirty or so, some books arrived, quite a slew of them, and all new. We were squatting on the floor, unpacking them, and Ted picked up a book, showed me the title, and said, “Have you read this?”
It was The Far Reaches, by a Walter Braden. “No,” I said. “I read the reviews a week or so ago, and they weren’t so hot.”
“I know,” Ted said, and he had a funny smile on his face. “And yet it’s a great book. Just think,” he went on, and shook his head a little, “you can buy this now, a new copy, first edition, for three dollars. Yet in—oh, a hundred and forty years, say, a copy like this might be worth five to eight thousand dollars.”
“Could be,” I said, and shrugged; but what kind of a remark is that? Sure, any book you want to name might be valuable someday, but why that book? And why a hundred and forty years? And why five to eight thousand dollars, particularly? Well, that’s the kind of thing I mean about the Hellenbeks. It wasn’t that anything big or dramatic or really out of the way happened that first day. It was just that every once in a while one or the other would do or say something that wasn’t quite right.
Most of the time, though, things were perfectly ordinary and normal. We talked and laughed and kidded around a lot, and I knew I was going to like the Hellenbeks and that Nelly would, too.
In the afternoon we got pretty hot and thirsty, so I went home and brought back some beer. This time Nelly came with me, met the new people, and invited them over for supper. Nelly complimented Ann on the nice things she had, and Ann thanked her and apologized, the way a woman will, because things were kind of dusty. Then she went out to the kitchen, came back with a dustcloth, and started dusting around. It was a white cloth with a small green pattern, and it got pretty dirty, and when she wiped off the window sills it was really streaked.
Then Ann leaned out the front window, shook the cloth once, and—it was clean again. I mean completely clean; the dirt, every trace of it, shook right out. She did that several times, dusting around the room and then shaking the cloth out, and it shook out white every time.
Well, Nelly sat there with her mouth hanging open, and finally she said, “Where in the world did you get that dustcloth?”
Ann glanced down at the cloth in her hand, then looked up at Nelly again and said, “Why, it’s just an old rag, from one of Ted’s old suits.” Then suddenly she blushed.
I’d have blushed too; did you ever see a man’s suit, white with a little green pattern?
Nell said, “Well, I never saw a dustcloth before that would shake out perfectly clean. Mine certainly don’t.”
Ann turned even redder, looking absolutely confused, and—I’d say scared. She mumbled something about cloth in South America, glanced at Ted, and then put the back of her wrist up against her forehead, and for an instant I’d have sworn she was going to cry.
But Ted got up fast, put his arm around Ann’s waist and turned her a little so her back was toward us, and said something about how she’d been working too hard and was tired. His eyes, though, as he stood looking at us over Ann’s shoulder, were hard and defiant. For a moment you almost got the feeling that it was the two of them against the world, that Ted was protecting Ann against us.
Then Nelly ran a hand admiringly over the top of the end table beside her and said how much she liked it, and Ann turned and smiled and thanked her. Nelly got up and led Ann off to the bedroom, telling her not to try to do too much all in one day, and when they came out a little later everything was all right.
We got to know the Hellenbeks pretty well. They were casual, easygoing, and always good company. In no time Nelly and Ann were doing their marketing together, dropping in on each other during the day, and trading recipes.
At night, out watering our lawns or cutting the grass or something, Ted and I would usually bat the breeze about one thing or another till it got dark. We talked politics, high prices, gardening, stuff like that. He knew plenty about politics and world events, and it was surprising the way his predictions would turn out. At first I offered to bet with him about a few things we disagreed about, but he never would and I’m glad he didn’t; he was seldom wrong when it came to guessing what was going to happen.
Well, that’s the way things were. We’d drop in on each other, take Sunday drives together and go on picnics, play a little bridge at night and on week ends.
Odd little things would still happen occasionally, but less and less often as time went by—and none of them were ever repeated. When Ted bought something now, he never had trouble finding the right change, and he didn’t discover any more rare old new books and Ann stopped walking into doors.
&n
bsp; They were always interesting neighbors, though. For one thing, Ted was an inventor. I don’t know why that should have surprised me, but it did. There are such things as inventors; they have to live somewhere, and there’s no good reason why one shouldn’t move in next door to us. But Ted didn’t seem like an inventor; why, the first time he cut their grass, I had to show him how to adjust the set screw that keeps the blades in alignment.
But just the same he was an inventor and a good one. One evening I was picking tomatoes in the little garden we have, and Ted wandered over, tossing something into the air and catching it again. I thought it was a paper clip at first. Ted stood watching me for a minute or so, and then he squatted down beside me and held out this thing in his hand and said, “Ever see anything like this before?”
I took it and looked at it; it was a piece of thin wire bent at each end to form two egg-shaped loops. Then the wire had been bent again at the middle so that the two loops slid together. I can’t explain it very well, but I could make you one easy in half a minute. “What is it?” I said, and handed it back to him.
“A little invention—the Saf-T-Clip,” he said. “You use it wherever you’d ordinarily use a safety pin. Here.” He unbuttoned one of my shirt buttons and slid the thing onto the two layers of cloth.
Well, do you know that I couldn’t unfasten my shirt where that little thing gripped it? Even when I took hold of both sides of my shirt and pulled, that little piece of twisted wire just dug in and held. Yet when Ted showed me how to undo it—you just pressed the wire at a certain place—it slid right off. It was just the kind of simple thing you wonder, “Now, why didn’t somebody ever think of that before?”
I told Ted I thought it was a hell of a good idea. “How’d you happen to think of it?” I asked.