Brett Halliday: Last Seen Hitchhiking

“Maybe. How far are you going?”

“Lauderdale, will that help?”

“It’s on my way.”

She dropped her knapsack in the back seat and got in front beside him. He went into gear.

“I don’t usually pick people up,” he said. “You can get yourself trapped in some weird conversations. Or those long silences, that’s even worse. No kidding, I know I’ve seen you. Do you go to Miami?”

“I’m in grad school, art history. I’ve just about decided not to finish.”

“The academic life,” he agreed. “It’s a long way from anything real.”

His eyes were brown, slightly bulging. He flipped down his dark glasses and they started up the ramp. The dashboard radio was muttering.

“Hitchhiking,” Meri caught, and her attention sharpened. It was a news program. It seemed that the governor had issued one more of his frequent warnings against the practice, and he had ordered the Highway Patrol to round up all hitchhikers and escort them to the nearest bus station or jail.

The driver made an irritated noise and snapped it off. “People always have to have something to be panicky about. Think of the number of cars on the road in Florida at any given minute. Hundreds of thousands. One little murder and everybody goes into orbit.” He gave her an approving look. “You’ve got sense enough not to fall for that bullshit. That’s really why I stopped.”

“I try not to let that kind of thing bother me.”

“There were twenty-five murders in Miami in the last few months, somebody told me. What’s everybody else supposed to do, leave town? Listen, put on your seat belt, will you? That’s one of the things I do believe in.” He was craning backward, waiting for an opening in the stream of northbound traffic. Meri had difficulty with the complicated harness. The belt seemed to be jammed.

“It’s an inertia belt,” he said, “off a reel. Pull gently.” When she still couldn’t make it come, he changed his blinkers and moved off on the shoulder. “Sometimes it sticks. It may take my delicate touch.”

He reached around to get at the belt, and she was enveloped by him suddenly. She felt a tiny spurt of alarm. Their bodies were in contact at several points. His forearm, grazing her cheek, felt sticky and woolly, like the belly of a caterpillar. The black glasses gave back a twin reflection of a girl, herself, also wearing black glasses.

“I guess it’s unnecessary,” he said, grimacing, “but goddamn it, I’d just worry.”

“If it’s that much of a thing, I’ll wait for another ride.”

“No, here it comes.”

He guided the belt off the reel with his right hand and pulled it across her breast.

There was a sparkle of sweat on his upper lip. She felt warm breath on her face. A sour smell came from the openings in his clothes.

His right hand was still behind her head, working forward and back. The strap tightened, and she realized all at once that she hadn’t been careful enough this time. Something sharp pricked her in the soft flesh behind the lobe of her ear. A needle; she heard the snick of plastic against plastic as the plunger came down.

She tried to strike out, but the belt was across both arms. He was almost on top of her. To people in passing cars, it must have looked like an embrace.

“I didn’t expect to get lucky today,” he whispered.

Like the dead girl in the News, she seemed to be both dismembered and struggling upward through loose sand. And then the car melted and folded in around her, and she slipped quietly down into the pain.

So far in her life, nothing really bad had happened to Meri. She had never been seriously sick or hurt. She had been in the hospital only once, to leave her tonsils. Her parents, in a Cleveland suburb, seemed to like her well enough, and they approved of most of the things she did except her hitchhiking. Her marks had always been O.K. She had never needed money. She had been in love several times, always pleasantly, and all these affairs, with the exception of the most recent, had ended without hard words or tears.

Now, it seemed, her luck had changed.

She dreamed that she was stretched out full-length on a padded table. An arrangement of seat belts kept her from moving. There was a light in her eyes. When she averted her face, the light followed.

She surfaced abruptly and stared up into a frosted globe on a movable arm. A long moment passed before she understood that it hadn’t been a nightmare. It was happening.

She was naked on a doctor’s examination table. Her feet were in stirrups. It wasn’t a seat belt across her chest, but a broad leather strap. Her arms were stretched out, with a leather cuff at each wrist. A rope connecting the cuffs ran underneath the table, and it had been tightened almost to the limit of her stretch. She could move her hands a few inches, but only in the direction of the floor.

She raised her head.

The driver who had picked her up on the interstate, wearing a green doctor’s smock, with his longish hair tucked inside a cloth cap, was sitting on a leather sofa reading a medical journal and smoking a cigar. He had a bottle of beer at his elbow.

When he saw she was awake he put the journal aside. “Finally. Do you know how long you’ve been out?”

Her eyes felt grainy. She wanted to rub them, but of course she couldn’t.

He answered his own question. “Hours and hours and hours. With chloral hydrate you never know.”

He came across to her. “Meri Gillespie. I looked at your ID. And you told me the truth, which doesn’t always happen. You really are a Miami grad student. How do you feel, outside of terrified?”

She moved her head slightly. There were several steel and bakelite machines, on wheeled stands, around the table, a glassed-in instrument cabinet, sinks, a framed diploma on the wall. It looked like a legitimate doctor’s office. The only thing that didn’t fit was the doctor himself, beaming down at her through his thick glasses.

He asked again how she felt. She felt weightless, as though her flesh had been changed to some much lighter substance. Her skin was sensitive to the chill breath of the air conditioner. There were two girls on the table — one the victim, the other the observer, who had always been lucky and had done well.

“You may feel a touch sick to your stomach for a time,” he said. “If you want to throw up, I’ll get you a basin. Now I don’t want you to feel embarrassed. Just be natural.”

One hand, with the burning cigar between the fingers, rested on the table near her shoulder. With his other hand he touched her neck.

“Rigid. That’s no good. Relax. You must realize by now that you aren’t going to do any more hitchhiking for a while.”

He laughed good-humoredly. “Don’t worry, I’m about to explain. That’s the part I love best. Here, if you’re determined to strain your neck.”

He brought a small pile of paper towels and put it under her head.

She spoke for the first time, thickly, “Who are you?”

“Haven’t you guessed?” he said happily. “I’m that old standby from late-night movies, the mad doctor.” He made a Count Dracula face and did a capering dance step in his bare feet. “I manufacture robots with no souls, and drink human blood.”

He bent over her and she pulled in her chin hard. His fat, moist lips touched her neck.

“Right there,” he said, pulling back. “I need a quart a day, and I hope you’re Type O, because otherwise my circulatory system gets confused.”

His face changed again and he said soberly, “As a matter of fact, I’m a med student, and I’m engaged in some very tricky physiological experiments. My name’s Bruno. People call me Bud.”