Doug Allyn - Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 32, No. 13, Mid-December, 1987

“Maybe somebody ought to come in,” I said. “Give you a hand. Lots of us would be proud to.”

“I don’t need no hand,” he said. “I don’t want no one helping.”

“Maybe Carrie needs a doctor,” I tried.

“No doctor,” he said. “Ain’t no doctor can help Carrie now.” Just as matter of fact as that.

“Well,” I said, “ I could do something.” I said it as slowly and as clearly as I could. “Somebody should be helping you out.”

He dropped the empty box onto the floor. “I don’t want no help,” he said. “I don’t want nothing from nobody.” He almost seemed angry or something.

I looked at him for a long time. But there was nothing to see in his face.

“Okay,” I said, after what seemed like a couple of minutes of him staring at me and me at him. “If that’s how you want it, John.”

“That’s how I want it.”

“You know I consider you my friend.”

“I know that,” he said.

Well, there it is. That was the whole of our conversation that day. I shrugged my shoulders and left. I looked back once and saw him still standing in the doorway of the milkhouse, glaring out at me. And when he turned around I left and didn’t look back no more.

Now when you go over all this you have to remember that we are an isolated and a rural people, as I said, and we have our ways. If he wanted to be all by himself to take care of Carrie until she died, if that was what was happening to her, who was I or who was anyone, to stop him. May seem odd, but that’s how people our way are. We take care of our own. We mind our own beeswax. And if we don’t want no help, why, that is our concern entirely. I guess I understood that in him. I didn’t like it, but I understood it.

The idea of Carrie being on her way to dying just almost destroyed me is all. The thought of never even getting to see her again. That was an awful thing to think about. It wasn’t till a couple of days later, after going over and over it in my head, that I got the first feelings that maybe there was more still, maybe John was not telling me the full truth. Just all of a sudden I had that thought. And then I couldn’t get it out of my mind.

But it was obvious to me that he was nervous and frightened and not acting like himself at all. So I concluded that maybe the idea of him holding back wasn’t so farfetched.

Maybe Carrie wasn’t just sick.

Maybe it was far worse than that. Something was making him act peculiar. And I sure did want to find out what that was.

I sat on my porch swing that evening, kicking the swing easy and watching John’s place. I felt sneaky and miserable doing it, like I was some kind of a spy, but I just kept on staring over there. And as it started to get dark, only his kitchen light was on, just like always.

Sometimes when a thing’s going wrong, a body gets to having a compulsion. It just takes hold of him, and he can’t help but do the first thing that occurs to him. He’s just got to.

Well, that was what happened to me. All of a sudden I couldn’t sit still no more. I figured to go on over to John’s house and get inside somehow and see what was going on. Whether he wanted me to or not. Trust or not. I had to see if Carrie was still alive, see if she was sick, see what was up. Anything would be better than sitting on that old swing and looking at his kitchen light and wondering.

I moved down off my porch and started towards his house. My stomach had begun to churn with fear, although to be truthful I don’t know even yet exactly what I was afraid of. Maybe just of what I was about to do. Handy to his house I began to slow up. My upper lip got to feeling cold and clammy. And the closer I came to the bright light of John’s kitchen, the darker everything else around me seemed to be.

It was really strange and unusual that night. In spite of all the rain just earlier that evening and in the past weeks, the sky was so clear and so dark you could see stars right down to the horizon. There was some houses way off in the distance, with their lights on, and it was hard to tell what was lights from the houses and what was stars. You don’t often get that.

I stopped just outside his gate, stood there for a couple of long minutes before I even dared to go into his yard. And I guess I never knew how much noise a creaky old wooden gate could make until that night.

I got to the edge of the house and then, bent over nearly double and moving slow as I could, I snuck on over to the window. I stood up carefully at the corner of it and peeked in.

It seemed so bright inside. John was sitting alone at the kitchen table. He was looking right at the window, but I was sure he didn’t see me. He appeared to be in a daze. He nodded his head. He did it again, like he was listening. I couldn’t see anybody else in the room. There was a look of unhappiness on his face that I’ll never forget, and it appeared like he had been weeping. He was just painful to see, is all.

Well sir, all of a sudden he starts to shake his head no, just a little and then a little more, and next harder and harder, like he had had enough. And then he sort of throws the chair backward and jerks himself up real quick, till he was standing. He let out this long, low moan that got louder until it was a scream. And again he screamed.

Then he run out of the kitchen, wailing things all the while, but I couldn’t make out what any of the words were.

Well, I was shocked so bad I could hardly move. But then I knew I had to do something, and so I circled the house slowly in the dark, trying for a look inside. There wasn’t a light in any of the windows or anywhere else but the kitchen. I could hardly believe that. He had to be in there somewhere.

It was fully dark outside now, too, and I kicked a pail that I didn’t see or it was some other fool thing, and I was scared he would hear. Or maybe I was scared he wouldn’t hear, I don’t know. But when I stood quiet, there was still only the silence.

Around the back of the house I was surprised that the river had got so close up the bank there that I had to be careful I did not slip into it as I circled. I could hear it moving by ever so slowly and ever so quietly. And it was a lot closer. Massive is what the Susquehanna river was that night. Dark, and quiet, and massive. And somehow majestic. Big rivers are like that.

I guess maybe it had got to within three feet of the house. Real close anyways. And it was still rising. I could hear clumps of sod falling in, washing away. It was an awesome thing, being in all that dark and knowing that the river was hissing quietly by almost tight up against the house, like a giant, slowly coiling snake that had a life of its own. I could feel it going by as well as hear it.

So I carefully worked my way round back to the kitchen window again, and I looked in, pretty boldly this time. But there was nothing unusual in there, except for how filthy it all was.

I waited for about five minutes. No sign of John returning. Everything was quiet. I’ll tell you, I felt about as strange as I want to, just standing there. It could have been peaceful that night, except for what was going on in the house. Or what I feared was going on.

My stomach was really cramping up good by this time, and my hands were all cold, and my upper lip. It felt as if someone was sticking needles into the back of my neck.

I stood there for a few more minutes, trying to decide. And then just suddenly I knew what I had to do. Moving as quietly as was possible for me, I came round to the steps and eased up onto the porch. I stood in front of the door, hesitating.

My head was going this way and that. I wanted to run. But the Lehmanns were my friends, and I had to try to help, whatever the problem was.