A Touch of the Creature

by Charles Beaumont

  Bob Lineman was calling off a tape to John Tommerlyn. There was an efficient pair for you.

  Jim Schott, the rate clerk, was on the phone; Norma Bothel was working the addressograph. Good workers.

  And all the rest of them, turning the wheels of the Company.

  What was the matter?

  Mac. Old Mac. Wearing the same brown suspenders and the same blank expression, his lips moving silently to the papers on his desk.

  Mr. Zullock frowned again. Those were important papers, extremely important, and Mac had made two serious and costly mistakes in the past week.

  A watch repair man replaces a worn out spring, doesn’t he, when the spring ceases to function properly? Yes, a watch repair man does that.

  Mr. Zullock sighed and attempted to work on his drafts. But the numbers lost themselves and he kept thinking of long overtime hours and responsi­bilities and other things.

  He pushed the papers aside and walked over to Mac’s desk.

  “Well, how’s she coming?”

  The old man turned his head around slowly.

  “What was that, sir?”

  “Just wondered if everything was going okay. That’s a complicated bunch of stuff you’ve got to untangle, what with the strike in ’Frisco and all.”

  “I will have it finished directly, sir, and you may check it if you wish.”

  “Yes, you might give them to me when you’re through, if you want, just to make double-sure. Lot of accounts are getting finicky as hell these days, y’know. Minneapolis Mining would drop us like a hot potato if they ever got overcharged for a haul.”

  Mr. Zullock looked down at the tips of his shoes for a while and then re­turned to his desk feeling strange.

  From the corner of his eye he watched Mac. Watched those wrinkled, brittle fingers move laboriously over the keys of the adding machine and the thin lips working silently. He watched the blank lines of the face and especially the slow cold eyes.

  He then noticed the hum of the machines in the office, which he’d never noticed before, so he went into the wash room.

  He smoked a cigarette there and thought about many odd things. About God and what fun it might be to draw pictures for a living and who first in­vented the wheel.

  Mostly he thought about the old man who worked for him. He tried to imagine Mac at the age of twenty or thirteen, of what he did when he got home and where that home was, if he kept pets and what his mother looked like.

  Then Bob Lineman came into the wash room, looking hot and red as he always did.

  “Harry,” he said, “why don’t you get that damned air conditioner fixed? It’s nearly ninety in there.”

  “Oh, that thing’s been out of whack since the day we got it installed. And since we’re on the subject of things out of whack, did you ever get that Billings deal unfouled?”

  “Where you been? That went through days ago—and believe me, I worked like a dog on that mess.”

  They laughed. But Mr. Zullock was worried.

  “Bob, do you have any idea who it was pulled that boner? You know, we almost lost the account.”

  Bob started to wash his hand carefully.

  “Look, Harry, I’ve been with the Company five years and next to Johnny I’m the youngest one here. I know who snafued the works, sure. I know who’s been pulling ’em right along. But I just don’t figure I’ve got the right to get anyone in dutch, that’s all. Just let it ride.”

  Mr. Zullock’s heart began to beat fast.

  “It was Mac, wasn’t it?”

  “Forget it, will you? I took care of it; it’s all right.”

  Mac, again.

  Mr. Zullock said nothing and lit another cigarette. Bob Lineman washed his hands again.

  “Bob, don’t go blaming yourself. I’ve been noticing a lot on my own hook and I don’t like it. And The Boss won’t like it either.”

  “I don’t want to butt in, Harry, but, well, since you know why don’t you face it? Mac’s just running down, that’s all. I would too if I was his age; so would you. And what the heck, the union’ll kick in something, there’s his pension and for all we know he’s got a nice little nest egg stashed away in the bank. Probably does—what would he spend money on?”

  Silence.

  “Look, sir, like I say, I don’t want to butt in. It’s your business, strictly. But, honest to God, I’m fed up with fixing the old boy’s butches. I got my work to do, we all do. And how are we—”

  “All right, all right. Don’t you think I know? Don’t you think I realise what’s got to happen? You’d better get back to your desk.”

  Bob Lineman left, feeling hurt and ashamed and wondering what he’d said to make his boss angry.

  As the door opened and closed Mr. Zullock heard the machines. They sounded loud and a chill went down his back.

  Mr. Zullock sat down at his desk and began to doodle on a scratch pad. But he could only listen.

  The slow deep sound of the machines. Like sad music, the kind they play at funerals.

  Cleketah. Cleketah. Cleketah.

  Like a slow, infernal dirge.

  He looked at Jim Schott. Jim had been with the Company thirteen years, the best rate clerk in the business. He had a wife and two kids and one grandchild. He took vacations and told jokes.

  But he was telling them less frequently now and tending more to work. A good sign, The Boss had said.

  Who ever heard of keeping a bad spring in a good watch?

  I want to be an artist, Mother.

  Miss Ten Eyck. With the Company almost eleven years, hadn’t missed a day.

  Her eyes. What was the matter with her eyes?

  No one laid off, no one new hired in . . . how many years?

  You’re going to be an essential part in this great machine, Harry Zullock.

  Why did Anne look so different now? She used to slump in her chair but now she sits straight and her personal calls get fewer.

  Cleketah. Cleketah. Cleketah. Cleketah.

  Quickly Mr. Zullock took a sheaf of papers from his desk and stared at them. They were the manifests Mac had done, the ones he was to check.

  Maybe they’d be all right. God, let them be all right!

  He wiped his forehead with a handkerchief and began to run through the figures.

  2,093. 5,648. 13,257.

  Right so far.

  3,907. 5,248.

  5,248—that couldn’t be. It was too much, surely.

  He checked against the original copy.

  3,248. A difference of two thousand dollars, and on the third set. Only the third set.

  Carefully he checked through the seven long, closely printed pages of numbers. There were ten errors: an overcharge of three thousand, eight hundred dollars.

  His fingers trembled. If those sheets had gone through the Company would have lost a five thousand dollar per week account. One of the best accounts.

  Mr. Zullock’s throat turned dry. He looked from one machine to another, from one worker to another, and he became confused. The roaring hum seemed to grow louder and faster. The machines sang furiously as he’d never heard them sing before.

  And soon he could not see the workers at all.

  Only dimly could he see the thing he’d been trained over a lifetime to see. But he saw it.

  He got up stiffly, took the sheaf of manifests and walked to Mac’s desk. The old man was bent over his adding machine.

  “Mac,” said Mr. Zullock, “I’d like to see you for a minute. Would you come over to my desk, please?”

  Mac said nothing. His head did not turn.

  Mr. Zullock waited, but there was no response. He waited for a long time and his throat began to ache.

  “Okay, Mac, I’ll be short and frank. There’ve been complaints and this manifest you did is a mess. What have you got to say?”

  Mac said nothing. His head did not turn.

  “Maybe you’re run down from so much work, I don’t know. But there’s too much at stake here to risk any more bungli
ng. Do you hear me?”

  Mac’s fingers worked slowly over the keys of his adding machine. But he didn’t turn his head and he didn’t say anything.

  The roar of the machines grew louder and louder and Mr. Zullock felt sick in his stomach.

  “Times have changed, MacElroy. New methods, new adjustments. You’ve been too slow; too many mistakes. Do you understand?”

  But the only sound Mr. Zullock heard was the cleketah, cleketah of his machines.

  Mac’s fingers barely moved on the keys now.

  “Look, I’m talking to you! Why don’t you answer? Can’t you understand—I’m firing you, Mac. You got all the chance in the world but you fell through. We’ve got to replace you.”

  Mr. Zullock was shouting now and he realized it. Something stabbed at his heart. His body shook and he was desperately afraid to look about him. The others—they were watching and wondering.

  Like he was wondering. Why he was afraid and why Mac just sat there.

  Then the noise stopped, abruptly as though it had never existed. A tomb­like silence, tense and expectant. He’d experienced it before; what office worker had not? The sound and the silence, like a person suddenly gone deaf.

  He stared at Mac.

  An almost imperceptible movement in the fingers and the head turning slowly, slowly.

  Mr. Zullock put a hand to his mouth to keep from screaming, when he looked into the eyes of Joseph MacElroy.

  And then he did scream, when he heard the soft, uneven sound of one machine.

  One machine which clicked for a few moments and was then silent.

  The Philosophy of Murder

  Mary Ellen Ross had been asleep only a few hours, when she found herself suddenly quite awake and with the overwhelming sensation that she was not alone in her bedroom. Instinctively she told herself that it was just a nightmare, or the mystery film she’d seen that night at the Palomar. But even so, she almost stopped breathing and listened for any unnatural sounds. There were none. Only the creaking of the old house and the dying murmur of what was left of the traffic on Broad Street. That was reassuring but she became frightened again when she remembered that her parents were spending the night at the Johnsons’ and wouldn’t be back until late the next evening. Jim Johnson and his wife had known Mary’s folks for over twenty years and had invited them to another of their parties. Mary was invited too, but then, Stantonville was almost sixty miles away and Leonard Kline had asked her for that date weeks and weeks ago. A wonderful fellow, Len, and a fellow with a future. Not like that terrible Ronald Mansfield, always trying to pet her and always getting mad when she wouldn’t let him. Thank goodness she’d gotten rid of him!

  The room was very quiet and the creaking had stopped, as it sometimes did. But Mary couldn’t get rid of that feeling. It scared her and she felt like hiding under the covers. Oh, I’m acting like a silly little girl! There’s no one here. I’m practically nineteen years old and besides, there hasn’t been any trouble in this neighborhood for simply years. See, now I can’t get back to sleep. I wish the street cars were running, or that Len would call up. Ta dum da dee, it’s rainin’ violets. . . . Wish it was morning already.

  She tried not to think of those stories Ronald Mansfield used to tell her. He had once taken a course in criminal medicine, on a scholarship at the University of Zurich. They were horrible stories, stories about girls’ bodies in big glass bottles and about men who’d been run over by trains and. . . . ta dum, it’s the silly old moon. She’d asked him not to tell her those things. He’d actually seen the body of that little girl who had a crucifix carved in her stomach, and who. . . . Those mystery pictures are sure corny. Everybody knew it wasn’t the butler. Everybody. Everybody. Everybody. With all her diamond rings, St. Louis woman. . . .

  A car passed in the street below her window. The headlights traveled from the ceiling across the wall and over Mary’s bed, and then disappeared. The room was blacker than before. But it was no longer quiet.

  From the corner where her dressing table stood, Mary could hear some­thing. Something that sounded like heavy breathing. She began to perspire and listened closely. It didn’t stop. Unable to make a sound, she buried her head in the pillow. She was trembling and very cold. It isn’t anything, it isn’t anything, it isn’t anything.

  As she whispered these words aloud, she heard the shades being pulled down and felt herself blinded when the lights flashed on. She gave a frightened little cry as she felt the covers being pulled from her shoul­ders. When she forced herself to look she saw a young man standing at the foot of her bed, the covers still in his hands.

  He looked at Mary and smiled nervously. He was a lad of about twenty, well dressed, closely cropped hair and with a certain scholarly appearance. He stood there, looking at Mary, knotting the bedclothes in his pale hands.

  “Ronald Mansfield! What are you doing here? You get out of here right now or I’m going to call the police. I’m going to tell your mother and father. Get out of my house this very second!”

  She recognised her visitor, but was none the less frightened. Ronald was in her morning class at school. She’d gone out with him a few times, but never really liked him. He was always looking at her that way, like he wanted to make her. She’d let him kiss her, but it never went beyond that. He’d go telling it to one of his brainy friends and soon everybody would know about it. He’d always get mad and sulk around or come begging for another chance. Then Leonard came along. He wasn’t an “A” student, but he could be serious minded sometimes, and sometimes be a barrel of fun. He didn’t go around quoting Schopenhauer and saying how terrible the world is and looking at her that way, like Ronald did. Ronald was a philosophy major and had it all worked out that the world was no good and everybody in it was no good. He’d even get in big arguments with Professor Warum. Anyway, he was never any fun. Always asking her up to his place to listen to Mahler and Schönberg and look at his library, and to read his silly novel. Ha! Len’s such a baby, in a way—he was almost shaking when he kissed her for the first time. That was fun. And she let Len do just about everything he wanted. He knew where to stop. But Ronald. . . . why did she ever get mixed up with him? He wasn’t good looking. Looked like a Nazi, with his hair cut short like that. Talked like one, sometimes. Like the time he bragged he’d make a perfect concentration camp officer. Screwball guy. Shorter than she was too. Maybe it was his manners. When you first got to know him he couldn’t be more courteous. Always holding the door open and saying “Oh, I beg your pardon, I’m terribly sorry.” That was just a show, she soon found that out. Oh, he was smart all right; got the best grades in his classes, even from Prof. Warum. The first night he took her out he gave her a leather bound edition of Wuthering Heights. Must have cost him a lot, either that or he stole it somewhere. She wouldn’t put it past him. Dressed up in his dark blue suit with that Tartan tie, no clerk would stop him. Not if he gave him one of those serious looks, like he sometimes gives people. And with those horn-rimmed glasses. The second night he was able to get his father’s car and drove her home, after the concert. But he came within a block, under that big elm, stopped the car and started to tell her that she was the only thing that could save him. Oh brother, what a line! “You haven’t the intelligence to understand what you mean to me,” he said. She didn’t like that, but let him kiss her. He got real excited and started to pet around. She pushed his hand away and gave him the story about that sort of thing only leading to another, and that she didn’t go in for it. It was unsophisticated, but always worked. But not with Ronald. He kept trying and finally got sore. Then he frowned and drove her home without saying goodnight. She decided not to see him any more after that, but the next day he said he was sorry and begged her for another chance. He seemed to have plenty of cash (even if he did work weekends as a shoe salesman), and after all, that book was a nice present. So she decided to go out with him again. When she met him that night she had on her white suit with that thick, tight belt. It gave her more curves. She
was one of the prettiest girls in town, and she knew it. Ronald picked her up at eight thirty, but instead of driving to the theatre he went into the country, near the ocean. He drove for two hours, telling her about his criminal medicine course and telling her that they were going to a party at the house of a friend of his. Then when they were almost to Laguna, he stopped the car and saw that this was the place. She couldn’t see any lights and could hear the ocean beating against rocks. She became frightened. He took her hand and they walked down a sandy path. Then he pointed ahead of him, and she could make out the outlines of an old, dark house. What had once been a very large house. The outside was nothing but charred timber, and in the moonlight she could see the edge of a cliff directly beyond. Ronald explained that he thought she’d appreciate his little joke, that he thought only she, of all his friends, could understand the serenity and beauty of that abandoned house. She got angry and scared and began to cry, and when he tried to put his arms around her she ran back to the car. He drove all the way back to town saying he was sorry, that he just wanted to share something with her. She jumped out of the car when they stopped for a signal, and took a bus home. She didn’t speak to Ronald Mansfield again in school and went out of her way to avoid him. But he never took his eyes off her.

  “Ronald, I’m warning you. I’ll call the police. Stop standing there, and give me back my covers. You’ve certainly got your nerve! Wait till Mr. and Mrs. Mansfield hear about this little trick! Ronald, do you hear me!”

  “Mary, I came because I had to. Don’t you understand, I came because there was no other way out, I had to.”

  He dropped the covers to the floor and locked the bedroom door. Mary was sitting on her bed, trembling and crying. As she saw the young man turn and start toward her, she covered her breasts with her hands. She had on a pair of blue pajamas, the same old pair her grandfather had given her years before. But she felt naked and ashamed and very frightened.

  “Surely you know that I’ve wanted you since the first day I saw you. Why did you have to go on treating me like that, when you knew how I felt? I wish I had the courage of Richard Cory. . . . I wished it then. Mary, I was going to ask you to marry me! I told you things I’ve told no one before. I stripped my soul in front of you. I let you read my novel, I . . . I haven’t been able to work on it, Mary, and do you know why? Because of you. I’ve dreamed of holding you close to me, of feeling your warm body next to mine. . . .”