Nightmares And Dreamscapes Part 22

' "Slip it through, dearie," she whispered. I slipped the envelope halfway under and she pulled it the rest of the way. I heard her tear it open and I waited. I just waited.

' "It's enough," she whispered. "You get on out of here, dearie, and don't you ever come back to Mama Delorme's again, you hear?"

'I got up and ran out of there just as fast as I could.'

Martha went over to the bookcase, and came back a moment or two later with a hardcover. Darcy was immediately struck by the similarity between the artwork on this jacket and that on the jacket of Peter Rosewall's book. This one was Blaze of Heaven by Peter Jefferies, and the cover showed a pair of GIs charging an enemy pillbox. One of them had a grenade; the other was firing an M-1.

Martha rummaged in her blue canvas tote-bag, brought out her son's book, removed the tissue paper in which it was wrapped, and laid it tenderly next to the Jefferies book. Blaze of Heaven; Blaze of Glory. Side by side, the points of comparison were inescapable.

'This was the other thing,' Martha said.

'Yes,' Darcy said doubtfully. They do look similar. What about the stories? Are they . . . well . . . '

She stopped in some confusion and looked up at Martha from beneath her lashes. She was relieved to see Martha was smiling.

'You askin if my boy copied that nasty honky's book?' Martha asked without the slightest bit of rancor.

'No!' Darcy said, perhaps a little too vehemently.

'Other than that they're both about war, they're nothing alike,' Martha said. 'They're as different as . . . well, as different as black and white.' She paused and then added: 'But there's a feel about them every now and then that's the same . . . somethin you seem to almost catch around corners. It's that suns.h.i.+ne I told you about - that feeling that the world is mostly a lot better than it looks, especially better than it looks to those people who are too smart to be kind.'

Then isn't it possible that your son was inspired by Peter Jefferies . . . that he read him in college and . . . '

'Sure,' Martha said. 'I suppose my Peter did read Jefferies's books -that'd be more likely than not even if it was just a case of like calling to like. But there's something else - something that's a little harder to explain.'

She picked up the Jefferies novel, looked at it reflectively for a moment, then looked at Darcy.

'I went and bought this copy about a year after my son was born,' she said. 'It was still in print, although the bookstore had to special-order it from the publisher. When Mr Jefferies was in on one of his visits, I got up my courage and asked if he would sign it for me. I thought he might be put out by rne asking, but I think he was actually a little flattered. Look here.'

She turned to the dedication page of Blaze of Heaven.

Darcy read what was printed there and felt an eerie doubling in her mind. This book is dedicated to my mother, ALTHEA DIXMONT JEFFERIES, the finest woman I have ever known. And below that, Jefferies had written in black fountain-pen ink that was now fading, 'For Martha Rosewall, who cleans up my clutter and never complains.' Below this he had signed his name and jotted August '61.

The wording of the penned dedication struck her first as contemptuous . . . then as eerie. But before she had a chance to think about it, Martha had opened her son's book, Blaze of Glory, to the dedication page and placed it beside the Jefferies book. Once again Darcy read the printed matter: This book is dedicated to my mother, MARTHA ROSEWALL. Mom, I couldn't have done it without you. Below that he had written in a pen which looked like a fine-line Flair: 'And that's no lie. Love you, Mom! Pete.'

But she didn't really read this; she only looked at it. Her eyes went back and forth, back and forth, between the dedication page which had been inscribed in August of 1961 and the one which had been inscribed in April of 1985.

'You see?' Martha asked softly.

Darcy nodded. She saw.

The thin, sloping, somehow old-fas.h.i.+oned backhand script was the same in both books . . . and so, given the variations afforded by love and familiarity, were the signatures themselves. Only the tone of the written messages varied, Darcy thought, and there the difference was as clear as the difference between black and white.

The Moving Finger.

When the scratching started, Howard Mitla was sitting alone in the Queens apartment where he lived with his wife. Howard was one of New York's lesser-known certified public accountants. Violet Mitla, one of New York's lesser-known dental a.s.sistants, had waited until the news was over before going down to the store on the corner to get a pint of ice cream. Jeopardy was on after the news, and she didn't care for that show. She said it was because Alex Trebek looked like a crooked evangelist, but Howard knew the truth: Jeopardy made her feel dumb.

The scratching sound was coming from the bathroom just off the short squib of hall that led to the bedroom. Howard tightened up as soon as he heard it. It wasn't a junkie or a burglar in there, not with the heavy-gauge mesh he had put over all the windows two years ago at his own expense. It sounded more like a mouse in the basin or the tub. Maybe even a rat.

He waited through the first few questions, hoping the scratching sound would go away on its own, but it didn't. When the commercial came on, he got reluctantly up from his chair and walked to the bathroom door. It was standing ajar, allowing him to hear the scratching sound even better.

Almost certainly a mouse or a rat. Little paws clicking against the porcelain.

'd.a.m.n,' Howard said, and went into the kitchen.

Standing in the little s.p.a.ce between the gas stove and the refrigerator were a few cleaning implements - a mop, a bucket filled with old rags, a broom with a dustpan snugged down over the handle. Howard took the broom in one hand, holding it well down toward the bristles, and the dustpan in the other. Thus armed, he walked reluctantly back through the small living room to the bathroom door. He c.o.c.ked his head forward. Listened.

Scratch, scratch, scritchy-scratch.

A very small sound. Probably not a rat. Yet that was what his mind insisted on conjuring up. Not just a rat but a New York rat, an ugly, bushy thing with tiny black eyes and long whiskers like wire and snaggle teeth protruding from below its V-shaped upper lip. A rat with att.i.tude.

The sound was tiny, almost delicate, but nevertheless - Behind him, Alex Trebek said, 'This Russian madman was shot, stabbed, and strangled . . . all in the same night.'

'Who was Lenin?'' one of the contestants responded.

'Who was Rasputin, peabrain,' Howard Mitla murmured. He transferred the dustpan to the hand holding the broom, then snaked his free hand into the bathroom and turned on the light. He stepped in and moved quickly to the tub crammed into the corner below the dirty, mesh-covered window. He hated rats and mice, hated all little furry things that squeaked and scuttered (and sometimes bit), but he had discovered as a boy growing up in h.e.l.l's Kitchen that if you had to dispatch one of them, it was best to do it quickly. It would do him no good to sit in his chair and ignore the sound; Vi had helped herself to a couple of beers during the news, and the bathroom would be her first stop when she returned from the market. If there was a mouse in the tub, she would raise the roof . . . and demand he do his manly duty and dispatch it anyway. Posthaste.

The tub was empty save for the hand-held shower attachment. Its hose lay on the enamel like a dead snake.

The scratching had stopped either when Howard turned on the light or when he entered the room, but now it started again. Behind him. He turned and took three steps toward the bathroom basin, raising the broomhandle as he moved.

The fist wrapped around the handle got to the level of his chin and then froze. He stopped moving. His jaw came unhinged. If he had looked at himself in the toothpaste-spotted mirror over the basin, he would have seen s.h.i.+ny strings of spittle, as gossamer as strands of spiderweb, gleaming between his tongue and the roof of his mouth.

A finger had poked its way out of the drain-hole in the basin.

A human finger.

For a moment it froze, as if aware it had been discovered. Then it began to move again, feeling its wormlike way around the pink porcelain. It reached the white rubber plug, felt its way over it, then descended to the porcelain again. The scratching noise hadn't been made by the tiny claws of a mouse after all. It was the nail on the end of that finger, tapping the porcelain as it circled and circled.

Howard gave voice to a rusty, bewildered scream, dropped the broom, and ran for the bathroom door. He hit the tile wall with his shoulder instead, rebounded, and tried again. This time he got out, swept the door shut behind him, and only stood there with his back pressed against it, breathing hard. His heartbeat was hard, toneless Morse code high up in one side of his throat.

He couldn't have stood there for long - when he regained control of his thoughts, Alex Trebek was still guiding that evening's three contestants through Single Jeopardy - but while he did, he had no sense of time pa.s.sing, where he was, or even who he was.

What brought him out of it was the electronic whizzing sound that signaled a Daily Double square. 'The category is s.p.a.ce and Aviation,' Alex was saying. 'You currently have seven hundred dollars, Mildred - how much do you wish to wager?' Mildred, who did not have game-show-host projection, muttered something inaudible in response.

Howard moved away from the door and back into the living room on legs, which felt like pogo-sticks. He still had the dustpan in one hand. He looked at it for a moment and then let it fall to the carpet. It hit with a dusty little thump.

'I didn't see that,' Howard Mitla said in a trembling little voice, and collapsed into his chair.

'All right, Mildred - for five hundred dollars: This Air Force test site was originally known as Miroc Proving Ground.'

Howard peered at the TV. Mildred, a mousy little woman with a hearing aid as big as a clock-radio screwed into one ear, was thinking deeply.

'I didn't see that,' he said with a little more conviction.

'What is . . . Vandenberg Air Base?' Mildred asked.

'What is Edwards Air Base, birdbrain,' Howard said. And, as Alex Trebek confirmed what Howard Mitla already knew, Howard repeated: 'I didn't see that at all.'

But Violet would be back soon, and he had left the broom in the bathroom.

Alex Trebek told the contestants - and the viewing audience - that it was still anybody's game, and they would be back to play Double Jeopardy, where the scores could really change, in two shakes of a lamb's tail. A politician came on and began explaining why he should be re-elected. Howard got reluctantly to his feet. His legs felt a little more like legs and a little less like pogo-sticks with metal fatigue now, but he still didn't want to go back into the bathroom.

Look, he told himself, this is perfectly simple. Things like this always are. You had a momentary hallucination, the son of thing that probably happens to people all the time. The only reason you don't hear about them more often is because people don't like to talk about them . . . having hallucinations is embarra.s.sing. Talking about them makes people feel the way you 're going to feel if that broom is still on the floor in there when Vi comes back and asks what you were up to.

'Look,' the politician on TV was saying in rich, confidential tones. 'When you get right down to cases, it's perfectly simple: do you want an honest, competent man running the Na.s.sau County Bureau of Records, or do you want a man from upstate, a hired gun who's never even - '

'It was air in the pipes, I bet,' Howard said, and although the sound which had taken him into the bathroom in the first place had not sounded the slightest bit like air in the pipes, just hearing his own voice - reasonable, under control again - got him moving with a little more authority.

And besides - Vi would be home soon. Any minute, really.

He stood outside the door, listening.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. It sounded like the world's smallest blind man tapping his cane on the porcelain in there, feeling his way around, checking out the old surroundings.

'Air in the pipes!' Howard said in a strong, declamatory voice, and boldly threw the bathroom door open. He bent low, grabbed the broomhandle, and s.n.a.t.c.hed it back out the door. He did not have to take more than two steps into the little room with its faded, lumpy linoleum and its dingy, mesh-crisscrossed view on the airshaft, and he most certainly did not look into the bathroom sink.

He stood outside, listening.

Scratch, scratch. Scritch-scratch.

He returned the broom and dustpan to the little nook in the kitchen between the stove and the refrigerator and then returned to the living room. He stood there for a moment, looking at the bathroom door. It stood ajar, spilling a fan of yellow light into the little squib of hall.

You better go turn off the light. You know how VI raises the roof about stuff like that. You don't even have to go in. Just reach through the door and flick it off.

But what if something touched his hand while he was reaching for the light switch?

What if another finger touched his finger?

How about that, fellows and girls?

He could still hear that sound. There was something terribly relentless about it. It was maddening.

Scratch. Scritch. Scratch.

On the TV, Alex Trebek was reading the Double Jeopardy categories. Howard went over and turned up the sound a little. Then be sat down in his chair again and told himself he didn't hear anything from the bathroom, not a single thing.

Except maybe a little air in the pipes.

Vi Mitla was one of those women who move with such dainty precision that they seem almost fragile . . . but Howard had been married to her for twenty-one years, and he knew there was nothing fragile about her at all. She ate, drank, worked, danced, and made love in exactly the same way: con brio. She came into the apartment like a pocket hurricane. One large arm curled a brown paper sack against the right side of her bosom. She carried it through into the kitchen without pausing. Howard heard the bag crackle, heard the refrigerator door open and then close again. When she came back, she tossed Howard her coat. 'Hang this up for me, will you?' she asked. 'I've got to pee. Do I ever! Whew!'

Whew! was one of Vi's favorite exclamations. Her version rhymed with P.U., the child's exclamation for something smelly.

'Sure, Vi,' Howard said, and rose slowly to his feet with Vi's dark-blue coat in his arms. His eyes never left her as she went down the hall and through the bathroom door.

'Con Ed loves it when you leave the lights on, Howie,' she called back over her shoulder.

'I did it on purpose,' he said. 'I knew that'd be your first stop.'

She laughed. He heard the rustle of her clothes. 'You know me too well - people will say we're in love.'

You ought to tell her - warn her, Howard thought, and knew he could do nothing of the kind. What was he supposed to say? Watch out, Vi, there's a finger coming out of the basin drainhole, don't let the guy it belongs to poke you in the eye if you bend over to get a gla.s.s of water?

Besides, it had just been a hallucination, one brought on by a little air in the pipes and his fear of rats and mice. Now that some minutes had gone by, this seemed almost plausible to him.

Just the same, he only stood there with Vi's coat in his arms, waiting to see if she would scream. And, after ten or fifteen endless seconds, she did.

'My G.o.d, Howard!'

Howard jumped, hugging the coat more tightly to his chest. His heart, which had begun to slow down, began to do its Morse-code number again. He struggled to speak, but at first his throat was locked shut.

'What?' he managed finally. 'What, Vi? What is it?'

'The towels! Half of em are on the floor! Shees.h.!.+ What happened?' '

'I don't know,' he called back. His heart was thumping harder than ever, and it was impossible to tell if the sickish, pukey feeling deep down in his belly was relief or terror. He supposed he must have knocked the towels off the shelf during his first attempt to exit the bathroom, when he had hit the wall.

'It must be spookies,' she said. 'Also, I don't mean to nag, but you forgot to put the ring down again.'

'Oh - sorry,' he said.

'Yeah, that's what you always say,' her voice floated back. 'Sometimes I think you want me to fall in and drown. I really do!' There was a clunk as she put it down herself. Howard waited, heart thumping away, her coat still hugged against his chest.

'He holds the record for the most strikeouts in a single game,' Alex Trebek read.

'Who was Tom Seaver?' Mildred snapped right back.

'Roger Clemens, you nitwit,' Howard said.

Pwooos.h.!.+ There went the flush. And the moment he was waiting for (Howard had just realized this consciously) was now at hand. The pause seemed almost endless. Then he heard the squeak of the washer in the bathroom faucet marked H (he kept meaning to replace that washer and kept forgetting), followed by water flowing into the basin, followed by the sound of Vi briskly was.h.i.+ng her hands.

No screams.

Of course not, because there was no finger.

'Air in the pipes,' Howard said with more a.s.surance, and went to hang up his wife's coat.

She came out, adjusting her skirt. 'I got the ice cream,' she said, 'cherry-vanilla, just like you wanted. But before we try it, why don't you have a beer with me, Howie? It's this new stuff. American Grain, it's called. I never heard of it, but it was on sale so I bought a six-pack. Nothing ventured, nothing grained, am I right?'

'Hardy-har,' he said, wrinkling his nose. Vi's penchant for puns had struck him as cute when he first met her, but it had staled somewhat over the years. Still, now that he was over his fright, a beer sounded like just the thing. Then, as Vi went out into the kitchen to get him a gla.s.s of her new find, he realized he wasn't over his fright at all. He supposed that having a hallucination was better than seeing a real finger poking out of the drain of the bathroom basin, a finger that was alive and moving around, but it wasn't exactly an evening-maker, either.

Howard sat down in his chair again. As Alex Trebek announced the Final Jeopardy category - it was The Sixties - he found himself thinking of various TV shows he'd seen where it turned out that a character who was having hallucinations either had (a) epilepsy or (b) a brain tumor. He found he could remember a lot of them.

'You know,' Vi said, coming back into the room with two gla.s.ses of beer, 'I don't like the Vietnamese people who run that market. I don't think I'll ever like them. I think they're sneaky.'