Stalking the Nightmare

by Harlan Ellison

  Hobie Pleen, a frightened man whose greatest dream was a renewal pickup at the end of thirty-six weeks, spread his hands with obvious disbelief at Tessler’s comment, and shook his head at Teddy Crazy. The camera revolved, and the monitors picked up Teddy Crazy once more looking at Tessler.

  Save now he was looking at the old man as though he was a pus-pocket of evil. “No, Professor … now that we’ve proved you’re not only a quack, a fraud, a charlatan and probably an embezzler of government funds, we’ve proved you’re a common garden-variety liar as well. Now, whaddaya have to say to that?”

  Tessler summoned up strength. “My theory iz gorrect!”

  “Oh yeah? Well, lemme ask you, the audience … do you believe this old loon? Do you believe there’s an entrance to a hollow Earth at the North Pole? Lemme HEAR IT!”

  The screams were thunderous. They beat against the walls, and they showered down like broken glass, and they sliced through the air like shards of steel, and little old Professor Tessler cringed behind the desk. It was what the law courts called res ipsa loquitur—a. thing that speaks for itself. No one believed him. Before millions of eyes, Tessler was—that quick, snap!—discredited.

  Now slumped hideously, as the screams died away, Tessler could only nod dumbly as Teddy Crazy said (with the uncommon softness one uses in addressing a dog one has just whipped into servility), “Now Professor, let’s talk about your theory …”

  It took Teddy Crazy only fifteen minutes—one segment of his show—to demolish Tessler and send him away trembling with hopelessness and frustration. And all across America, no one, but no one, believed the Professor was onto anything more significant than a bad case of too much cheap whiskey.

  Teddy Crazy took a station break for commercials, four of them, plus two piggybacks, and came back to greet his second guest, Miss Anita DeStyre, topless dancer supporting a fatherless family of seven.

  She came onstage to wolf whistles, rumbles of unbridled libidos and a round of applause usually reserved for Ministers of State. She was quite tall, almost six feet, wearing white knee-length patent leather boots, a miniskirt that just reached below her buttocks, and flowing long blonde hair. Her bust was immense. But there was an undeniable sweetness about her; something very close to innocence in the face. Laugh-lines and a directness that belied both her occupation and the moron face Teddy Crazy wore as she approached his desk.

  “Good evening, Miss DeStyre,” Teddy Crazy said.

  “Good evening, Mr. Crazy,” she replied.

  “What kind of an evening is it for sluts, Miss DeStyre?”

  The audience dropped back into fitful silence. It had thought for a moment Teddy Crazy would play porno-word games, dou-ble-entendre, with this pretty thing. But apparently he knew something …

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she looked blank.

  “What it means is, you’re as phony as Dickie Nixon’s nighty-night prayers. It means you go around telling everyone your measurements, when the truth of the matter is that you are all puffed out with silicone!”

  “That’s a dirty lie!”

  “Yeah, well, dolly in for a closeup, Camera #3, because this piece of paper I’m holding in my right hand is a sworn affidavit from Dr. Kenneth J. Opatoshu, a plastic surgeon of Beverly Hills, who swears that on July 17th of last year he operated on you for bust expansion, using silicone and—”

  Anita DeStyre grabbed the neck of her dress in both hands and ripped down, suddenly. There was the sound of tortured cloth, and then, before the protruding eyes of millions of Americans in the Great Wasteland, Miss DeStyre was naked to the waist. “How about those, buddy,” she demanded of her host, “do those look like phoneys?”

  They were cut off the air instantly. Or rather, the taping was stopped. Miss DeStyre was re-clothed, in a topcoat loaned by a man in the third row of the audience, and they started taping again.

  Teddy Crazy sat with folded hands, looking calm and as though he had swallowed something that would enrich him. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “what you have just seen … one of the grossest demonstrations of the debasement of the female mystique … is a living demonstration of the unfittedness of this woman to retain legal motherhood of seven defenseless children. I had no affidavit on that piece of paper … it was merely an attempt on my part to provoke this woman into an act of such ugliness that her true nature would reveal itself. I urge everyone out there to write to the juvenile authorities here in Los Angeles to have those seven small children removed from the custody of a woman who is even less than an honest prostitute …”

  Anita DeStyre began to cry.

  It took fifteen minutes for that segment, and by the time it aired, three days later, the representatives of the juvenile court had already moved in to take Anita DeStyre’s seven children from her. That they had been happy with their mother, that she had worked endlessly to provide a good home for them, made no difference. Teddy Crazy had done his job well. Anita DeStyre killed herself on the night the show aired.

  But that was only one-third of the ninety minutes allotted to Teddy Crazy. As the show progressed he destroyed a promising novelist (accusing him of being a rank pornographer), the manufacturer of a new drug purported to cure cancer (with a barrage that insinuated side-effects of the drug produced something more hideous than thalidomide babies), and a woman seeking her long-lost husband (by proving to the audience’s satisfaction that the man being sought had been in charge of the gas ovens at Dachau).

  Teddy Crazy’s show was nearing its end for that night.

  It had been a typical, average, interesting show./ What Hobie Pleen would have called “a good show, Teddy.” “And who’s our last guest, Rollin?” Teddy Crazy asked.

  There was no answer from Rollin Jacoby.

  But there was a flash of light and the distinct smell of something that should have been flushed.

  And onto the stage walked His Satanic Majesty, the Prince of Darkness, Satan.

  Or at least it looked like him.

  His long tail protruded from the seat of his Brooks Bros, suit, and the triangular end of it whipped and thrashed as he stalked across to the desk. His cloven hoofprints were burned into the formica of the studio floor. His horns were ramlike and curved upwards from the thatch of bloodred hair that covered his head. His eyes were burning coals, his fingernails were black, and the expression on his face even startled Teddy Crazy. For a moment.

  “The Fallen Angel is your last guest, Mr. Crazy,” the visitor said. And he seated himself, pulling the black crimson-lined cape around himself.

  Teddy Crazy stared. For a moment. Then he whipped out his moron mask and stared back at the audience. They got the message. Another weirdo!

  They applauded and demanded Teddy take this jerk apart, piece by horn by tail by piece.

  Teddy returned the mask to its drawer, and turned to his guest. “Well, Your Majesty,” and the words oozed loathing and ridicule, “to what do we owe the special privilege of your presence here on my humble show?”

  “To be precise, Mr. Crazy, I’m here tonight to offer you a reward.”

  “Oh? And what might that be, you silly goose?”

  “A rare delight. A special potion that my imps in the lowest recesses of Hell have concocted just for you.”

  “And, uh, might I be accurate in calling it some sort of hallucinogenic crutch that other, less-fortunate folks might use to delight tfte/nselves?”

  “Not strictly speaking, no. You can call it a psychedelic if you choose, but it’s much more ancient a recipe than that.”

  “Well, let’s just trot it out here.”

  Satan reached into an inner pocket, and brought out a small piece of paper that looked like litmus paper. He handed it to Teddy Crazy. He was careful not to touch the emcee.

  Teddy Crazy held it in his hand for a moment, then threw it down on the desk. “All right, nutso, enough of this nonsense. Let’s find out exactly what it is you’re trying to promote with that get-up and all these insane s
henanigans.”

  “I’m not trying to promote anything, Mr. Crazy. I’m here merely to reward you for your unstinting service.”

  “Now you’re trying to say I work for you?”

  Incredulity, from the audience.

  “On the contrary,” said Satan. “Evil is an essence, Mr. Crazy. It is like faith. One must believe to make it so. Contrariwise, if one does not believe, whatever it is that is doubted, ceases to be. I believe Bishop Berkeley introduced the theory on Earth many years ago.”

  Teddy Crazy looked bored. “Forget the philosophy, creep, and just sock it to me nitty-gritty.”

  Satan nodded agreement. “Fine. Fine. I don’t have too much time to waste in any case.

  “The point is, Mr. Crazy, that many of the people you have sent to me from this show—most recently a Professor Tessler, a Miss DeStyre, a Mr. Grogan and two others, just tonight, do not really belong in my operation. They have been discredited, disbelieved in because of your machinations, and so they are cluttering up really overcrowded conditions in my habitat. It seems the only way to get things back on a more-or-less even keel is to reward you for what you’ve done, and put an end to all of this. Thus: the little delight before you.”

  Teddy Crazy turned to his audience. “Do you folks dig what this nit is saying?”

  They could dig it … and they laughed.

  “Well, if I’m a charlatan, Mr. Crazy, then you should have no fears about trying this little potion soaked into the talla paper.”

  “That’s just swell, Satan old buddy. You think I’m gonna drop acid right here in front of a couple five million people, just to give you your jollies? You think I’m gonna pollute my precious bodily fluids, just to give you a chance to push whatever hideous narcotic this is, in front of school children and helpless folks who want something to lighten their burdens? No chance … no damn chance, as you’d say!”

  “I’m afraid you have no choice, Mr. Crazy,” Satan said, and stared at the emcee with eyes like the maws of leaping volcanos.

  “How about it, folks…” Teddy Cra2y’s voice rose a trifle hysterically, “…do you believe this moron is the devil? Do you believe he’s what he says he is?”

  The audience began screaming, the sound built up and up, and all across America the viewers by the millions added their lusty throaty yells of disbehef and ridicule and hysteria.

  Even as Teddy Crazy—quite without any volition—lifted the talla paper and popped it into his mouth, and chewed it. They screamed louder and louder, telling the man in the devil suit that he was a fraud, that they didn’t believe in him, that he wasn’t real … even as Teddy Crazy turned to stone before their very eyes. Turned to a nice pink marble, and then crumbled into a pile of dust on the desktop and the chair.

  But it didn’t help his visitor much. Because, as he had said, disbelief brings disillusion. That which is not accepted, is rejected. Teddy Crazy was dust, but his visitor vanished. Just like that. Never to be heard from again.

  There were rumors, later that month, out of the Vatican, that there was a terrific power struggle going on downstairs for possession of the Dark Kingdom, but the reports were unreliable, so no one ever really knew.

  But this was true: Teddy Crazy, in dying and doing the world two big favors, got the highest rating of his career.

  THE CHEESE STANDS ALONE

  Cort lay with his eyes closed, feigning sleep, for exactly one hour after she had begun to snore. Every few minutes he would permit his eyes to open to slits, marking the passage of time on the luminous dial of his watch there on the nightstand. At five a.m. precisely he slipped out of the Olympic pool-sized motel bed, swept up his clothes from the tangled pile on the floor, and dressed quickly in the bathroom. He did not turn on the light.

  Because he could not remember her name, he did not leave a note.

  Because he did not wish to demean her, he did not leave a twenty on the nightstand.

  Because he could not get away fast enough, he pushed the car out of the parking slot in front of the room and let it gather momentum down through the silent lot till it bumped out onto the street. Through the open window he turned the wheel, caught the door before the car began rolling backward, slid inside and only then started the engine.

  Route 1 between Big Sur and Monterey was empty. The fog was up. Somewhere to his left, below the cliffs, the Pacific murmured threats like an ancient adversary. The fog billowed across the highway, conjuring ectoplasmic shapes in the foreshortened beams of his headlights. Moisture hung from the great, thick trees like silver memories of times before the coming of Man. The twisting coast road climbed through terrain that reminded him of Brazilian rain forest: mist-drenched and chill, impenetrable and aggressively ominous. Cort drove faster, daring disaster to catch up with him. There had to be more than the threat of the forest.

  As there had to be more in this life than endodontics and income properties and guilt-laden late night frottage with sloe-eyed dental assistants. More than pewter frames holding diplomas from prestigious universities. More than a wife from a socially prominent family and 2.6 children who might fit a soap manufacturer’s perfect advertising vision of ail-American youth. More than getting up each morning to a world that held no surprises.

  There had to be disaster somewhere. In the forest, in the fog, in the night.

  But not on Route 1 at half-past-five. Not for him, not right now.

  By six-thirty he reached Monterey and realized he had not eaten since noon of the previous day when he had finished the root canal therapy on Mrs. Udall, had racked the drill, had taken off his smock and donned his jacket, had walked out of the office without a word to Jan or Alicia, had driven out of the underground garage and started up the Coast, fleeing without a thought to destination.

  There had been no time for dinner when he’d picked up the cocktail waitress, and no late night pizza parlor open for a snack before she fell asleep. Acid had begun to burn a hole in his stomach lining from too much coffee and too little peace of mind.

  He drove into the tourist center of Monterey and had no trouble finding a long stretch of open parking spaces. There was no movement along the shop-fronted sidewalks. The sun seemed determined never to come up. The fog was heavy and wet; streaming quicksand flowed around him. For a moment the windows of a shop jammed with driftwood-base lamps destined for Iowa basement rec rooms solidified in the eye of the swirling fog; then they were gone. But in that moment he saw his face in the glass. This night might stretch through the day.

  He walked carefully through the streets, looking for an early morning dinette where he might have a Belgian waffle with frozen strawberries slathered in sugary syrup. An egg sunnyside up. Something sunnyside up in this unending darkness.

  Nothing was open. He thought about that. Didn’t anyone go to work early in Monterey? Were there no services girding themselves for the locust descent of teenagers with rucksacks, corpulent business machine salesmen in crimson Budweiser caps and Semitic widows with blue hair? Had there been an eclipse? Was this the shy, pocked, turned-away face of the moon? Where the hell was daylight?

  Fog blew past him, parted in streamers for an instant. Down a side street he saw a light. Yellow faded as parchment, wan and timorous. But a light.

  He turned down the side street and searched through the quicksilver for the source. It seemed to have vanished. Past closed bakeries and jewelry shops and scuba gear emporia. A wraith in the fog. He realized he moved through not only the empty town and through the swaddling fog, but through a condition of fear. Gnotobiosis: an environmental condition in which germfree animals have been inoculated with strains of known microorganisms. Fear.

  The light swam up through the silent, silvered shadow sea; and he was right in front of it. Had he moved to it… had it moved to him?

  It was a bookstore. Without a sign. And within, many men and women; browsing.

  He stood in the darkness, untouched by the sallow light from the nameless bookshop, staring at the nexus. For such a
small shop, so early in the morning, it was thronged. Men and womea stood almost elbow to elbow, each absorbed in the book close at hand. Gnotobiosis: Cort felt the fear sliding through his veins and arteries like poison.

  They were not turning the pages.

  Had they not moved their bodies, a scratching at the lip, the blinking of eyes, random shifting of feet, a slouch, a straightening of back, a glance around … he would have thought them mannequins. A strange but interesting tableau to induce passersby to come in and also browse. They were alive, but they did not turn the pages of the books that absorbed them. Nor did they return a book to its shelf and take another. Each man, each woman: held fascinated by words where the books had been opened.

  He turned to walk away as quickly as he could.

  The car. Get on the road. There had to be a truck stop, a diner, a greasy spoon, fast food, anything. I’ve been here before, and this isn’t Monterey!

  The tapping on the window stopped him.

  He turned back. The desperate expression on the tortoiselike face of the tiny old woman stiffened his back. He found his right hand lifting, as if to put itself between him and the sight of her. He shook his head no, definitely not, but he had no idea what he was rejecting.

  She made staying motions with her wrinkled little hands and mouthed words through the glass of the shop window. She spoke very precisely and the words were these:

  I have it here for you.

  Then she motioned him to come around to the door, to enter, to step inside: I have it here for you.

  The luminous dial of his watch said 7:00. It was still night. Fog continued to pour down from the Monterey peninsula’s forest.

  Cort tried to walk away. San Francisco was up the line. The sun had to be blazing over Russian Hill, Candlestick Park, and Coit Tower. The world still held surprises. You’re loose now, you’ve broken the cycle he heard his future whisper. Don’t respond. Go to the sun.