And that's the way things went on until today, when the kid's school let out
early because of the storm.
'The boy says he went right home,' Henry told us. 'There's no light in the
upstairs hall at all - the boy claims his dad musta snuck out some night and
broke it - so he had to sort of creep down to his door.
'Well, he heard somethin' moving around in there, and it suddenly pops into his
mind that he don't know what Richie does all day through the week. He ain't seen
his dad stir out of that chair for almost a month, and a man's got to sleep and
go to the bathroom some time.
'There's a Judas hole in the middle of the door, and it's supposed to have a
latch on the inside to fasten it shut, but it's been busted ever since they
lived there. So the kid slides up to the door real easy and pushed it open a bit
with his thumb and pokes his eye up to it.'
By now we were at the foot of the steps and the house was looming over us like
a-high, ugly face, with those windows on the third floor for eyes. I looked up
there and sure enough those two windows were just as black as pitch. Like
somebody's put blankets over 'em or painted 'em up.
'It took him a minute to get his eye adjusted to the gloom. An' then he seen a
great big grey lump, not like a man at all, slitherin' over the floor, leavin' a
grey, slimy trail behind it. An' then it sort of snaked out an arm - or
something like an arm - and pried a board off'n the wall. And took out a cat.'
Henry stopped for a second. Bertie was beating his hands together and it was
godawful cold out there on the street, but none of us was ready to go up just
yet. 'A dead cat,' Henry recommenced, 'that had putrefacted. The boy said it
looked all swole up stiff . . . and there was little white things crawlin' all
over it .
'Stop,' Bertie said. 'For Christ's sake.'
'And then his dad ate it., I tried to swallow and something tasted greasy in my
throat.
'That's when Timmy closed the peephole.' Henry finished softly. 'And ran.'
'I don't think I can go up there,' Bertie said.
Henry didn't say anything, just looked from Bertie to me and back again.
'I guess we better,' I said. 'We got Richie's beer.'
Bertie didn't say anything to that, so we went up the steps and in through the
Do you know how a cider house smells in summer? You never get the smell of
apples out, but in the fall it's all right because it smells tangy and sharp
enough to ream your nose right out. But in the summer, it just smells mean, this
smell was like that, but a little bit worse.
There was one light on in the lower hall, a mean yellow thing in a frosted glass
that threw a glow as thin as buttermilk. And those stairs that went up into the
shadows.
Henry bumped the cart to a stop, and while he was lifting out the case of beer,
I thumbed the button at the foot of the stairs that controlled the
second-floor-landing bulb. But it was busted, just as the boy said.
Bertie quavered: 'I'll lug the beer. You just take care of that pistol.'
Henry didn't argue. He handed it over and we started up, Henry first, then me,
then Bertie with the case in his arms. By the time we had fetched the
second-floor landing, the stink was just that much worse. Rotted apples, all
fermented, and under that an even uglier stink.
When I lived out in Levant I had a dog one time - Rex, his name was - and he was
a good mutt but not very wise about cars. He got hit a lick one afternoon while
I was at work and he crawled under the house and died there. My Christ, what a
stink. I finally had to go under and haul him out with a pole. That other stench
was like that; flyblown and putrid and just as dirty as a borin' cob.
Up till then I 'had kept thinking that maybe it was some sort of joke, but I saw
it wasn't. 'Lord, why don't the neighbours kick up, Harry?' I asked.
'What neighbours?' Henry asked, and he was smiling that queer smile again.
I looked around and saw that the hall had a sort of dusty, unused look and the
door of all three second-floor apartments was closed and locked up.
'Who's the landlord, I wonder?' Bertie asked, resting the case on the newel post
and getting his breath. 'Gaiteau? Surprised he don't kick 'im out.'
'Who'd go up there and evict him?' Henry asked. 'You?'
Bertie didn't say nothing.
Presently we started up the next flight, which was even narrower and steeper
than the last. It was getting hotter, too. It sounded like every radiator in the
place was clanking and hissing. The smell was awful, and I started to feel like
someone was stirring my guts with a stick.
of it.
Bertie made a soft little cry an' whispered out: 'Look what we're walkin' in!'
I looked down and saw all this slimy stuff on the hall floor, in little puddles.
It looked like there'd been a carpet once, but the grey stuff had eaten it all
away.
Henry walked down to the door, and we went after him. I don't know about Bertie,
but I was shaking in my shoes. Henry never hesitated, though; he raised up that
gun and -beat on the door with the butt of it.
'Richie?' he called, and his voice didn't sound a bit scared, although his face
was deadly pale. 'This is Henry -Parmalee from down at the Nite-Owl. I brought
your beer.'
There wasn't any answer for p'raps a full minute, and then a voice said,
'Where's Timmy? Where's my boy?'
I almost ran right then. That voice wasn't human at all. It -was queer an' low
an' bubbly, like someone talking through a mouthful of suet.
'He's at my store,' Henry said, 'havin' a decent meal. He's just as skinny as a
slat cat, Richie.'
There wasn't nothing for a while, and then some horrible squishing noises, like
a man in rubber boots walking through mud. Then that decayed voice spoke right
through the other side of the door.
'Open the door an' shove that beer through,' it said. 'Only you got to pull all
the ring tabs first. I can't.'
'In a minute,' Henry said. 'What kind of shape you in, Richie?'
'Never mind that,' the voice said, and it was horribly eager. 'Just push in the
beer and go!'
'It ain't just dead cats anymore, is it?' Henry said, and he sounded sad. He
wasn't holdin' the gun butt-up any more; now it was business end first.
And suddenly, in a flash of light, I made the mental connection Henry had
already made, perhaps even as Timmy was telling his story. The smell of decay
and rot seemed to double in my nostrils when I remembered. Two young girls and
some old Salvation Army wino had disappeared in town during the last three weeks
or so - all after dark.
'Send it in or I'll come out an' get it,' the voice said.
'I guess you better, Richie.' He cocked his piece.
There was nothing then, not for a long time. To tell the truth, I began to feel
as if it was all over. Then that door burst open, so sudden and so hard that it
actually bulged before slamming out against the wall. And out came Richie.
; It was just a second, just a second before Bertie and me was down those stairs
like schoolkids, four an' five at a time, and out the door into the snow,
slippin an' sliding.
Going down we heard Henry fire three times, the reports loud as grenades in the
closed hallways of that empty, cursed house.
What we saw in that one or two seconds will last me a lifetime - or whatever's
left of it. It was like a huge grey wave of jelly, jelly that looked like a man,
and leaving a trail of slime behind it.
But that wasn't the worst. Its eyes were flat and yellow and wild, with no human
soul in 'em. Only there wasn't two. There were four, an' right down the centre
of the thing, betwixt the two pairs of eyes, was a white, fibrous line with a
kind of pulsing pink flesh showing through like a slit in a hog's belly.
It was dividing, you see. Dividing in two.
Bertie and I didn't say nothing to each other going back to the store. I don't
know what was going through his mind, but I know well enough what was in mine:
the multiplication table. Two times two is four, four times two is eight, eight
times two is sixteen, sixteen-times two is -We got back. Carl and Bill Pelham
jumped up and started asking questions right off. We wouldn't answer, neither of
us. We just turned around and waited to see if Henry was gonna walk in outta the
snow. I was up to 32,768 times two is the end of the human race and so we sat
there cozied up to all that beer and waited to see which one was going to
finally come back; and here we still sit.
I hope it's Henry. I surely do.