Until You Are Dead

by John Lutz

  After the brandy Cal Tinky suggested they go back into the recreation room for some drinks and relaxation. For a short time the Tinkys stayed in the dining room as Cal helped Emma put away some perishables, and Bill and Della were alone.

  Della nudged Bill playfully in the ribs and moved close to him. "These people are weird," she whispered.

  Bill grinned down at her. "Just a little eccentric, darling. Maybe we'd be, too, if we had their money."

  "I hope we find out someday," Della said with a giggle. She quickly hushed as the Tinkys came into the room.

  Cal Tinky was carrying a fresh bottle of Scotch. "The first order is more drinks," he proclaimed in his loud voice.

  He mixed the drinks at the bar and served them, then he looked around at the many games and entertainment devices. "Anything for your amusement," he said with his wide grin.

  Bill smiled and shrugged his shoulders. "You're the game expert, Cal."

  Cal Tinky looked thoughtful and rubbed his square jaw. "Make it something simple, if you will," Della said. "I don't feel very clever tonight."

  "How about Bank Vault?" Cal asked. "It's a simple game, but it's fun for four people."

  He walked to a shelf and took down the game. Bill and Della followed him to a round shaggy rug, where he opened the box and spread out the game board. Emma spread four cushions for them to sit on.

  When they were seated with fresh drinks, Cal Tinky proceeded to explain the rules.

  It was an easy game to learn, uncomplicated, based like so many games on the advance of your marker according to the number you rolled on a pair of dice. The board was marked in a concentric series of squares, divided into boxes, some of which had lettering inside them: "Advance six squares,"

  "Go back two,"

  "Return to home area." Occasionally there were shortcuts marked on the board where you had your choice of direction while advancing. Each player had a small wooden marker of a different color, and if the number he rolled happened to land his block on the same square as an opponent, the opponent had to return to the home area and start over. Whoever reached the bank vault first was the winner.

  They rolled the dice to determine in what order they'd play, then settled down on the soft cushions to enjoy themselves.

  Cal and Emma Tinky played seriously and with complete absorption. Cal would roll his number and move his red block solemnly while his eyes measured the distance his opponents were behind him. Emma would move her yellow block in short firm steps, counting the number of squares as she moved it.

  The game lasted through two drinks. Bill had rolled consecutive high numbers, and his green block was ahead until near the end of the game. Then he had landed on a "Go back ten" square and Cal had overtaken him to win. Emma was second, only three squares ahead of Bill, and Della's blue block brought up the rear after an unfortunate "Return to home area" roll.

  "Say, I have another game similar to this only a little more interesting," Cal said, picking up the board. "Let's try it."

  Bill reached to help him put the game away and found that his fingers missed the block he'd tried to pick up by half an inch. He decided to go easier on the Scotch.

  Cal returned with the new game and spread it out on the soft rug to explain it to them. It was almost exactly like the first game. This time the board was laid out in a circle divided into compartments. The compartments were marked as rooms and the idea was to get back first to the room in which you started. This time the obstacles and detours were a little more numerous.

  "Does your company manufacture this game?" Bill asked.

  "Not yet," Cal Tinky said with his expansive grin, "but we're thinking about it. It's not the sort of game with mass appeal."

  They rolled the dice in the same order. Bill rolled a twelve and moved well out ahead, but on his second roll he came up with a seven, landing him in the dining room, where the lettered message instructed him to skip his next turn for a snack. Della moved out ahead of him then, landing in the den. Emma rolled a three but landed in the utility room, where she was instructed to advance ten squares. This brought her yellow block only two squares behind Della's and she emitted her high, strange laughter. Cal rolled snake eyes, allowing him a free roll, and he came up with a twelve. His red block landed on the den, and he placed it directly atop Della's blue block.

  "Does that mean I go back to the entrance hall?" Della asked, smiling like a sport but feeling disappointed.

  "In a manner of speaking," Cal Tinky said. He drew from beneath his sport jacket a large revolver and shot Della.

  The slam of the large-caliber bullet smashing into her chest sounded almost before the shot. Della flopped backward, still smiling, her legs still crossed. A soft sigh escaped her body and her eyes rolled back.

  "Della. . . "Bill whispered her name once, staring at her, wanting to help her, knowing she was dead, finally and forever. A joke, a mistake, a horrible, unbelievable mistake! He turned toward the Tinkys.

  Cal Tinky was smiling. They were both smiling.

  Words welled up in Bill's throat that would not escape — anger that paralyzed him. He stood unsteadily, the room whirling at first, and began to move toward Cal Tinky. The long revolver raised and the hammer clicked back into place. Bill stood trembling, grief-stricken, enraged and afraid. Cal Tinky held the revolver and his smile steady as the fear grew, cold and pulsating, deep in the pit of Bill's stomach. The floor seemed to tilt and Bill screamed, a hoarse sobbing scream. He turned awkwardly and ran in panic from the room, from death.

  He stumbled through the dining room, struggling to keep his balance. At the edge of his mind he was aware that Cal had put something in the drinks, something that had destroyed his perception, sapped his strength, and he tried to fight it off as he ran to a window. The window was small and high, and as he flung aside the curtains he saw that it was covered with a steel grill. With a moan, he ran awkwardly into the next room, to the next window. It, too, was barred. All the rooms that had windows were inescapable, and all the outside doors were locked. He ran, pounding against thick barred windows that wouldn't break or open, flinging himself against doors that wouldn't give, until finally, exhausted and broken, he found himself in the kitchen and dragged his heaving body into a small alcove lined with shelves of canned goods, where he tried to hide, to think, to think .

  In the recreation room Cal Tinky looked at his wife over the game board. "I think he's had enough time," he said. "It never takes them more than a few minutes to run to cover."

  Emma Tinky nodded and picked up the dice. With a quick expert motion of her hand she rolled a nine.

  Cal rolled a six. "Your shot," he said.

  Emma rolled the dice again, a seven. She leaned over the board and, counting under her breath, moved her yellow block forward in short tapping jerks.

  "The kitchen," she said. "Damn! They never hide in the kitchen."

  "No need to get upset," Cal Tinky said. "You'll probably get another roll."

  Emma drew a long revolver exactly like her husband's from beneath her corduroy vest and stood. Stepping over Della, she walked from the recreation room toward the kitchen. Her husband picked up the game and followed, careful to hold the board absolutely level so that the dice and the colored blocks wouldn't be disturbed.

  The sound of the shot that came from the kitchen a few minutes later wasn't very loud, like the hard slap of an open hand on a solid tabletop — but Emma Tinky's high, long laugh might have been heard throughout the house.

  The Basement Room

  Say this about Bernice — she believed in getting things done, and so she did them.

  Her husband Eldon, on the other hand, was more than something of a procrastinator. It was his philosophy that problems, like clouds, if simply ignored long enough would often drift away. And while Bernice wasn't exactly careless with money, she wouldn't hesitate to spend what had to be spent. Eldon, to the contrary, was notoriously tight-fisted.

  Another of Bernice's traits was curiosity, or nosiness
, as Eldon thought of it. Not that she was overly interested in other people's concerns. She would enter the affairs of acquaintances slowly but inevitably, gradually permeating their situations as water wends its way into too-porous cement. There was no defense against her. Eldon, however, was aloof, self-contained, even secretive at times in the jealous protection of his privacy. Eldon was tall, sharp-featured and almost completely bald; Bernice was a short, round-featured woman, attractive for her forty-five years, and with a huge mop of naturally curly chestnut hair.

  After fifteen years of marriage, Eldon and Bernice Koins were living examples of the adage that opposites attract, but only initially.

  "Eldon," she said to him one morning before breakfast, "it's already so hot in here I could fry your eggs right on your plate. When are you going to have the air conditioner repaired?"

  The air conditioner unit for the house had stopped working in mid-July, and week after week Eldon had debated whether or not they could afford to have it repaired at that time. They had sweltered through many an argument about the air conditioner, and now here it was August.

  "It'll be fixed soon," Eldon told her, thinking that September and cooler weather was right around the corner. "The Jantzens down the street don't even have an air conditioner."

  "The Jantzens are also in Canada," Bernice said, setting his plate of bacon and eggs before him.

  "Maybe my raise will be on my next pay check," Eldon said, nibbling a piece of bacon and ignoring Canada. "I'm bound to get a raise. The company gives everyone a raise after five years."

  Eldon was a representative of Loomis Tranquilizer Company, and he traveled almost continuously, which was fortunate for the preservation of his marriage. He was due to leave that very day on a flight to New York and would be gone six days.

  "I'm getting tired of being cooped up in this steam bath while you're in some air-conditioned hotel room," Bernice said, flouncing across the kitchen and seating herself opposite Eldon. "I'm liable to just draw some money from the savings account and call an air conditioner repairman while you're gone."

  Eldon didn't change expression. He knew she wouldn't dare do that.

  "That money's in the savings account for a particular reason," he said firmly, adding cream to his coffee. "I told you we might get the air conditioner fixed next week."

  "Always next week or next this or next that," Bernice complained, spooning sugar into her black coffee. "The only way I can get anything fixed around this house is save up enough money myself from my household allowance to pay for it."

  "So save enough to buy a new compressor for the air conditioner," Eldon said derisively. He dabbed at his lips with his folded napkin and stood from his unfinished breakfast, irritated and completely without appetite. "I have to go now if I'm going to catch my plane. I'll be at the Langton if you want to call me."

  Bernice stared up at him coldly, with her round blue eyes. "Your reservation says the Reardon Hotel."

  Eldon's thin lips drew even thinner and a gray vein throbbed near his temple. "You've been in my attaché case, haven't you?"

  "And why not?" Bernice said indignantly. "I am your wife. I needed a pen in a hurry and thought you might have one in there. You did, clipped on that little notebook with all those people's names and addresses in it. Is that Mr. Calder the same man we knew in Buffalo?"

  "No," Eldon said evenly, "he's not."

  Bernice started to say something else, but Eldon turned and walked abruptly from the kitchen. He would file for divorce against Bernice, he told himself for the hundredth time. Then he began to ponder the various consequences, especially the alimony payments he would have to begin making.

  The main trouble with living with Bernice was that Eldon's privacy, one of the things he valued most, had diminished to the point where it was almost nonexistent. Intolerable. He had even thought — very fleetingly of course — of murdering Bernice, arranging a fatal "accident". But for all the methods he considered Eldon lacked the courage even if he could summon up the decisiveness.

  He was in the living room, by the door, with his luggage and his attaché case.

  "I'm going," he said loudly. He thought he should say something.

  "Go," came the voice from the kitchen. "I'll call the Reardon later to make sure you got there."

  Intolerable. Eldon hesitated on the porch, trying to decide if he should slam the door. He concluded that would only give Bernice the satisfaction of knowing she had angered him, and he closed the door softly and turned away to the heat of the rising morning sun.

  Perhaps it was the quest for privacy that caused Eldon to construct the room in the basement. He had an inexact layman's ability at carpentry, but he planned ahead thoughtfully and was painstakingly careful.

  The room wasn't very large, about ten by ten, occupying one corner of the basement. Eldon purchased the material and worked on it most of his vacation then in the evenings after work. During the various stages of construction, Bernice would come down the basement stairs, look about and try to draw him into conversation so she could find out exactly why he was building the room. Did he plan to use it for storage, an office, a den? But Eldon studiously ignored all questions concerning the room, casually drowning out some of them with buzz of saw or crash of hammer.

  Once he had the studwork up the rest went quickly. Eldon certainly hadn't skimped on the materials. The studs were broad and close together, the paneling fairly expensive, thick and deeply grained birch. The floor was made up of squares of gray asbestos tile with swirling designs in them. There was a solid wooden door, thick and soundproof. For ventilation Eldon had cut into the ductwork and installed a small register near the double-layered wallboard ceiling.

  When he was finished he closed the door to his room and told Bernice to stay out of it.

  Eldon didn't leave town for over a week after the room was finished, then he was called on to make a four day jaunt through the Midwest. He left as usual with his beat up luggage and his black leather attaché case, and he surprised Bernice slightly by telling her the hotels he'd be staying at so she could call him.

  The first day of Eldon's absence Bernice merely walked down the basement stairs and stood for a long time scrutinizing the closed large wooden door to the room. The second day she tried the knob, found that it turned. She pressed her ear hard against the cool wood of the door, heard nothing, then went back upstairs. On the third day she had a late breakfast, walked down the basement stairs, stood before the room's door for a moment, turned the knob, drew several deep breaths, and shoved the door open.

  The room was empty.

  Absolutely empty, spotlessly clean and empty. Bernice backed out, shut the door and walked slowly up the stairs.

  Eldon was back as scheduled, but was due to leave again in three days and would be gone almost two weeks. He acted perfectly normal, didn't mention the room or even seem to go near it. The night before he was to leave Bernice cooked his favorite veal and potato dinner and tried to draw him out.

  "Incidentally," she said absently as she passed him the butter, "what are you planning to use it for?"

  "It. What do you mean?"

  "The room you built," Bernice said casually. "You know, in the basement."

  Eldon said something unintelligible around a mouthful of veal.

  "Did you say den, dear?"

  "Tender," Eldon corrected as he took a sip of tea. "I said the veal is exceedingly tender."

  "Thank you."

  "What I meant," Eldon said, "was that it probably is an unnecessarily expensive cut."

  "But the room--"

  "There is no need to change the subject," Eldon said, clashing serving spoon on plate as he took another huge helping of mashed potatoes.

  Eldon left early the next morning for the airport, holding to his silence.

  It was two mornings later before Bernice again made her way down the basement stairs to stand before the room. This time she found the door partway open. Decisively, she pushed it open wider and st
epped inside.

  Still empty. Bernice left the room and went slowly back upstairs.

  She poured herself a second glass of tomato juice and sat thoughtfully at the kitchen table. Something! He had to have built the room for something! She sipped the juice slowly, staring out the window at high unmoving clouds.

  When Bernice was finished with her tomato juice she went back downstairs, entered the room and began to examine the sturdy paneling carefully for some kind of concealed compartment or trick door. She was lightly tapping the north wall with her knuckles when the telephone rang faintly from above.

  The caller was a man who understood that she and her husband owned their own home and wanted to sell her some storm windows. Bernice refused him, hung up and came back to the basement. She reentered the room and absently closed the door behind her.

  When Eldon returned from his business trip late the next week, he walked through the front door, stood listening, then called his wife's name three times, each louder than the last. When there was no answer he began to walk slowly, almost aimlessly, from one room to the next. At last he went to the basement.

  He stood before the door to the room, his ear pressed to the wood, as Bernice had once stood. After a few minutes his hand went to the knob, twisted slowly, more slowly. He was perspiring and breathing rapidly as he pushed inward.

  Eldon looked first at the long scratches on the paneled walls, the inside of the door, even the ceiling. The vibrant silence hummed in his ears as he forced himself to look at what had been only a shapeless form on the edge of his vision.

  Bernice lay curled on her side near the center of the floor, arms crossed, mutilated, claw-like hands grasping her forearms. Her right cheek was pressed flat to the smooth tile floor and her blue eyes were open and calm, as if equating the near horizon.

  Kneeling beside her, staring at her with that curiosity reserved for the dead, Eldon wondered how she had died. Not suffocation, for he'd vented the room. Hunger perhaps. Thirst? Fright? The empty calm in her eyes was belied by the grotesquely leering tautness of her mouth.