Weird Tales volume 38 number 03 Canadian

by McIlwraith, Dorothy

  I could see the current state of affairs

  and this man Ronsford were eating away at my husband.

  Time passed and the path of construction widened and headed toward us so that during the day when I sat on the porch reading or listening to the radio, I could hear the sounds from the crew and I came to know the noise Big Mike made. There was nothing else up there, tractors or trucks, that had the heavy, deep-throated rumbling and vibrating of the huge steam shovel. On Sundays we often drove past the excavations.

  "He keeps Big Mike all polished up," Ed growled, and even I could notice how shiny the steamshovel was, its cab where the operator sat on the left side resplendent under a new coat of red paint.

  Ed Mumbled a lot under his breath those days and what I could mainly make out was the word "Ronsford." He hated the shovel's operator, swore there was an unholy allegiance between the man and machine.

  It was along about the first week in June that Ronsford disappeared. There was a lot of noise and investigation but no clews. Nobody'd known too much about him beforehand except that he had a mechanical engineering degree and some good references. The construction boss just figured he'd skipped out all of a sudden. There was no evidence of foul play, and it wasn't too much latei thai Ed came home and told me of a conversation he had with the boss.

  His big, broad face lit up, "So he says to me, Vilma, he says, 'Meglund, you been watchin' that steam shovel and fuss-in' around with it for quite a while now. Think you can take on the job?' "

  Ed clapped his hands together almost like a kid. "Whaddya think of that, Vilma?"

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  47

  Yeah, what I thought! I can also remember that almost directly Ed began to run Big Mike there were funny things went on over at the construction site, and I don't mean humorous! Ed would come home and tell me, "That shovel's a devil, Vilma. A big tough baby, and he's got a mind of his own. I was standing under him this morning and that shovel started to come down right on top. If the boss hadn't looked up, we would've both been smashed like that," and he plunked the flat of his hand down on the table hard.

  "Course the motor was idling but the cables were locked. I dunno how it happened."

  This and other things. Big Mike stut-tred and stalled when they were trying to push ahead the fastest. Once it used its teeth on one of the diggers, breaking two ribs and a shoulder, and of course, Ed took the blame. All his elation was going and I secretly was sorry Big Mike had ever rumbled and trundled onto the scene. But it was evident to me that Ed wouldn't be running the shovel very much longer the way tilings were happening.

  ~V7ES, it sure was a bad day Big Mike -*- had turned up! Just how bad I didn't realize until an evening a month after Ronsford had disappeared. We'd gone to bed early and I was lying there listening to the night noises, those things, whatever you call them, that chirp and squeak outside as though they never got any sleep. I could tell from his breathing that Ed was awake, too, and I guessed he was worrying how much longer they'd let him have his shovel. Or maybe he was worrying about other things.

  T don't know which one of us heard the noise first but it didn't mean so much

  to me. Just a rumbling far off in the distance like a freight train makes crossing a distant bridge at night. Then Ed said—I remember his exact words— "Vilma, you awake?"

  "Sure," I answered.

  "Funny noise," he went on, and we both listened.

  The rumbling continued, off in the distance. Then it seemed a little louder, or maybe the wind had shifted. We both lay there in the dark listening. Certainly, whatever it was, it was getting louder and it came to have a familiarity, but it was Ed who said, "Vilma, that's construction equipment. It's Big Mike !"

  And I remember as he said it there was wonder in his voice, no more than that— just . . . wonder.

  I asked, "What are they doing up there? Working any sort of night shift?"

  "Naw. I'd know if they were."

  Then in a few more seconds, "That noise is getting louder, isn't it, Vilma ?"

  "Yes," I agreed.

  "Somebody's running the damned machine." hM started to get out of bed. "It's coming this way. What's this? Some kind of joke?"

  Suddenly something flashed through my mind. I'm not superstitious. I've never believed in ghosts or such, leaving that for the backwoods folks. But my thoughts tumbled out abruptly the way crazy ideas do at night.

  "Ed, you don't suppose its Ronsford running that machine, that he's come back all of a sudden?"

  My husband laughed then, and it was unpleasant with an undertone of meaning.

  "Not Ronsford," he replied, and almost boisterously, "Ronsford's not coming back. Old Girl. Maybe somebody's

  THE MURDEROUS STEAM SHOVEL

  playing some kind of dumb joke; but it isn't Ronsford!"

  Still the sound bore down on us and the rumbling became a vibrating in the darkness. The crickets and insects and other night noises were swallowed up in it. Our bedroom was south and the construction spot was north.

  "I'm gonna investigate," Ed had said, pulling on overshoes and a long coat.

  He took a flashlight from the closet and clumped into the living room. I was annoyed by the vibration now. There was an ominous heaviness about it, and as it came closer, the vibrating became a throbbing that dug into your temples almost like a blow. I heard the porch screen door slam and then it was that something made me decide to get up myself. I hastily got on some clothes and went out onto the porch. There was a flicker of light somewhere outside. That would be Ed. And beyond through the night came this bellowing, throbbing sound. There was an eerie awfulness about it. I realized I was shaking although the night was warm.

  There Was a rim of. thin woods some ways across the field that stretched in front of the coLtage. I could hear timber cracking in the wake of the rumbling. Ed's flashlight beamed forward, and although I expected it, it was a shock to see the giant outline of the steam shovel emerge like some prehistoric monster from the trees at the field's edge. It was too far away and too dark to make out the details, but I was sure it was Big Mike. The red operator's cab told me that.

  The steam shovel continued forward, Ed's flashlight upon it, until it reached a spot halfway between the woods and our piace. It stopped there and amazingly

  the shovel arm reached down and forward, the jagged bitting teeth ripping into the earth. I heard my husband curse and yell then above the noise of the motor. The shovel's scoop came up full of earth and the trap under the scoop opened and dirt fell, only there was something else. Something that caught for a moment and then dropped like a-long full sack ... or a human bodyJ

  My husband screamed again, only instead of anger, the sound of his voice was now filled with animal fear. The beam of his flash flicked away from the steam shovel and the bobbing light told me he was racing toward the house. Big Mike's motor roared as it too came forward, a black hulk moving at incredible speed.

  T WRENCHED myself free from the

  bands of fear that were tied around my throat and legs pinning me to the porch and ran through the cottage to the back door. I stumbled over something and went down hard. I threw the carelessly left rake aside and got up, my ankle paining. I heard the screen door on the other side of the house jerk open and my husband's screaming voice. I was on my feet by now and hobbling away as fast as my injured ankle would let me. Behind, the screams of fear continued and then came a sudden shocking splintering of wood as though the house were being torn up by its very roots. The rumbling sounds were fused with the splintering and crashing of timbers. There was one more terrible cry from my husband and then silence except for the splintering and crashing of the machine that was running amuck in our cottage.

  The pain from my ankle made me feel faint and I was glad for the cool rain that

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  49

  began to fall. I looked behind once more and saw that the destructive rampage of the metal monster had started a fire in
the remains of the cottage. Against the red flickering light I saw the bulk of Big Mike standing there. Pieces of painted wood and beaverboard from the wreckage festooned on its sides and broken over its shovel, and the conflagration, as it flamed up in the remains of the house, showed me more.

  The shovel came to rumbling life, circling around the house to return the way it had come. As it did, the operator's cab was thrown in strong relief against the flames and in the cab—I swear it, I am very sure of this—there was no one! No one, I tell you. The cab was empty!

  | GUESS I fainted then for I remember no more until I came to in a neighbor's house where I had been brought by the volunteer firemen who had been summoned to the blaze. It was hours afterward and no one would listen to my story. A doctor kept forcing sedatives on me. Although nobody would tell me at the time, I found out later that no trace of my husband had been found. The cheap wooden house had burned completely and only the torrential rain that had come up luckily right afterward had prevented the fire from spreading to the surrounding trees and woods.

  I tried to tell them about Big Mike but everybody looked very stern and disbelieving. The more I tried, the more medicine I was given.

  Finally, I was taken to the Northville Hospital. Gradually it dawned on me no one believed my story. The construction boss himself came to see me, and tearfully I begged him to listen to me but he shook his head and turned away.

  3—*

  "That's absurd, Vilma. You've just been through a terrible experience. Big Mike was right wfiere he always is the next morning and certainly there would've been tractor marks around your place."

  Of course there would have, I thought.

  "Weren't there?" I asked.

  "No," he replied definitely.

  Then the explanation came to me. The unusually heavy rainfall in that soft earth. That would obliterate the marks of treads. But he set his lips in a thin stern line, shook his head, and just said, "I'd better go now."

  There were police officers who came, and I was glad the nurse never gave them more than a few minutes with me. They asked me endless questions about my husband and about Ronsford- It seems the body of the missing steam-shovel operator had been found lying out in the rain-filled field. It was obvious from his condition that the man had been dead for at least a month and that he had met his end violently. I knew then, of course, without too great surprise, that my husband had murdered Ronsford. But that seemed to me so trivial beside the living menace of Big Mike.

  After a while a doctor came in to talk to me. A psychologist or something, I was told he was. I tried again desperately to tell him what had happened thai night, to try and make him believe. But I realized the more I talked, the more that set, decided expression came over his face. I was struck with a new fear then. Let them think me crazy. I didn't care. But I had to get out of Northville or somehow Big Mike would come down here. Kven in the village hospital I didn't feel safe Why, we were barely nine

  so

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  miles from the construction site. I had m get out, somewhere, anywhere.

  So several days later when the hospital doctor and the psychologist asked me to sign a paper agreeing to go to a. "sanitarium," I complied happily. I knew this was a—well, to put it bluntly—an insane asylum but I also knew that I wasn't crazy. But if I stayed here, that rumbling metal monster would get me.

  The place to which I allowed myself to be committed voluntarily was no state booby hatch. We'd had a little money put away upon which I now felt free to draw. And the semi-private sanitarium was thankfully out at the other side of the state several hundred miles away.

  T REMEMBER the day I left North-A ville. The day had been hot, the sky was suffused with mistiness, and as we went out into the street to get into the taxi that would go to the station, I noticed that one of those sudden summer storms was coming up. My traveling companion was a male nurse, or maybe I should say, attendant. As we trundled away from the hospital, the beginnings of a feeling of relief stole over me. The streets grew darker suddenly, and then in the distance there was a rumbling. At first, like on that horrendous night, I could not identify the sound, but suddenly the fear came to me, catching me by the throat, that it was Big Mike, that he was after me, that he'd never let mc leave Northville.

  I guess maybe I leaned forward a bit on the taxi seat, for when there was a flash of lightning, big fat droplets of water exploded against the taxi window and I sank back with relief, I noticed that the attendant was looking at me closely. Of course, the rumbling had been thun-

  der. Probably Big Mike was up beyond the other end of town shovelling away busily, all thoughts of me gone from his metal mind.

  Still I was glad to get on the express, glad with every mile that clicked off as we headed across the state. The male nurse—his name was Simpson, I learned —was a nice enough fellow, but he was always eyeing me as though he half expected me to do something strange. The joke, of course, was on them, for I was escaping from something or someone who had had it in for the Meglunds, whether Rons ford's ghost or not, I didn't know or care. I just knew there was some terrible menace back in Northville. It had gotten Ed and I didn't want it to get me. Also, my "condition" had cut short the noisy police questioning. I can say with a clear conscience that I had nothing directly to do with the death of Ronsford.

  Oh, I suppose I knew what was going to happen, my husband being the kind of man he was, brooding; around about wanting to operate that damn shovel, and nights he'd skulk around outside in the woods between the little rented cottage and the construction site. But honest to God, I never knew the real story. Ed didn't last long enough to tell me. Sure, I heard him digging out there one night in the soft earth and it was the next day that Ronsford was just gone. Btrt Vil-ma not the one to stick her nose into other people's business. That steamshovel job brought more money, too, and that was okay my me. You think a girl wanLs to grow old and never have any of the nice things? You're crazy. Let Ed be the big shot and run the steam shovel, 1 thought. I'll take the extra dough, and if he keeps his mouth shirt, I'll keep my mouth shut. So I couldn't be implicated

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  in anything as unpleasant as murder, could I?

  Five hours across the state and out at Belfast, a dozing little village considerably smaller than Northville. We climbed off the railroad coach and I stood on the platform watching the train puff away into the soft summer evening, leaving behind a plume of lightish brown smoke that dispersed slowly in the heavy air. Simpson had engaged a cab and we and m y luggage distributed ourselves around the interior.

  I remember that drive with crystal clearness. The country in this part of the state is flatter, but in spite of it, the land is beautiful. I looked around with greater interest than I had shown in anything for weeks and Simpson seemed pleased with my remarks about the beautiful trees and flowers.

  T>YERLY HOME was a scant fifteen-minute ride from the depot, and as we wound up its dirt driveway, the thought came to me that after all life such as the one I had embarked on since that fateful night had its advantages. There were no responsibilities, no decisions to make, no personal crises, just a regular schedule, care, relaxation.

  As though to second my unspoken thoughts, when we drew up at the whiteboard main building, we were met by two people, a man and woman, the woman dressed in ordinary clothes and the man having about him no hint of the medical except for the peeping end of a stethoscope in his coat pocket.

  Simpson got out first with my luggage, and the woman, who was introduced to me as Miss Meadows, took me by the arm very kindly and led me up onto the porch and inside.

  "You must- be tired," she said in a soothing voice.

  My room, I found, was at the extreme end of the house on the second floor and over the deep porch that spread three quarters of the way around the wooden building.

  I remember that first night at Byerly Home, I'd had supper down in the main dining room, and as far as I could see, i
t was much like the dining room of any country inn or hotel. To be sure, a woman at one of the tables in the corner had started to cry. Convulsive sobs that were not pretty to hear, but Miss Meadows and another woman had gone over and helped her out of the room. Nobody else seemed to pay much attention.

  I remember my dominant thought that night. Here I was, perfectly safe. The others there might be worried about how they could get out. I patted myself on the back for being at a place where nobody, nothing, could get in—nosy police officers, or anything else.

  I had several sessions with Dr. Blake. I told him what had happened that night back at Northville, the night Big Mike stampeded after us, killed Ed, and tried to get mc too, and I could sec the same thinly veiled look of incredulity on Blake's face that I had seen on the physician's face back at Northville.

  The patients didn't mingle very much, but I took long walks in the surrounding country with Miss Meadows and I had what they called an occupational therapy class where I did some kind of silly weaving.

  I remember my third session with Blake. I was trying to tell him about Big Mike, persisting against questions which seemed to me to have nothing to do witti that night The physician was asking ms

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  about my previous life, about my childhood, school days, living with Ed, tilings that as far as I could see, had no bearing on anything. I stubbornly insisted on talking about Big Mike. I saw Blake's lip curl almost in scorn and I realized in a flash the contempt most of these people felt toward anyone deranged.

  For of course I knew full well that I was not. I think then I felt a bit sorry for the other patients who were really mentally sick. Well—as sorry as I've ever felt for anyone outside of Vilma.

  It definitely seemed to make Blake angry to have me continue to talk about the steam-shovel episode. His parting remark to me as he ushered me out of his upstairs office was, "You know, Mrs. Meglund, you have to help us—help you!"

  'TTHAT night I did some long and deep A thinking. You're still young, Vilma, I told myself. After all, you are in a nut house now. You don't want to stay here all the rest of your years, do you, Kid? I realized Byerly Home had had a purpose. It had been the right thing for me to do to come here, but from now on my ticket was to cut out the Big Mike talk. Nobody believed it. The biggest joke of all—and I swear this wasn't wishful thinking—I began to wonder, myself.