Alfred Hitchcock - Alfred Hitchcock Presents - 16 Skeletons From My Closet

Suddenly, Helen was conscious of only one sensation. She was very cold. Then she realized she could not focus her eyes properly. She saw the old man and the familiar furniture of the room, but everything was distorted, as if she were observing objects through the tumbling stream of a waterfall. She clutched the back of a chair and forced herself to speak.

"I'll ask you to explain yourself as briefly as possible, Mr, Heavenridge. Then you will please leave this apartment, or I will be forced to call the superintendent."

Mr. Heavenridge was lighting a foul cigar. He blew smoke, said, "I hope you don't mind cigars. I smoke a great many of them. An old man's only vice, my dear. I prefer very strong tobacco, but I'm sure you'll become used to it."

He regarded the glowing tip of the cigar, nodded with satisfaction. Then he said, "You and your sister are most careless about your window shades, my child. Perhaps it is because you live in the rear of the building, on the first floor, and fancy you aren't observed. But I have watched you often. I sit in darkness, you see. The dark is kinder to an old man than the light. The darkness is filled with memories. In the darkness my own two daughters come back to me from the grave. I see them plainly in their summery frocks and their broad-brimmed hats, with the sweet flush of youth upon their cheeks. Then one day, soon after you and your sister moved into this apartment across the areaway, I realized that those dim figures of the darkness had become real, alive! You are so like my eldest, Alice. Sweet and calm, always obedient. And your little sister, she is like my younger daughter, Dora. Willful, but lovely. I see now I was not stern enough with her. But it is not too late to rectify my mistake. You and your sister will become my daughters, my dear. And I will become your loving father, always near to protect you, from this night until the dear Lord calls me to his bosom. Oh, we will be so happy, the three of us!"

The old man expelled cigar smoke. "I killed my daughters, you know," he said. "I killed them more than twenty years ago."

The waterfall veiled Helen's eyes and thundered in her ears. She could no longer control her voice.

"You — you killed your daughters?" she fairly shrieked.

The old man nodded calmly. "It wasn't exactly murder, my dear," he replied. "Not like the terrible thing that happened here tonight. I indulged my daughters too much. Their mother died when they were very young. When they became young ladies, they wanted a car. I bought one, but I was a poor driver and so one day I smashed the car. Now you don't think I did that on purpose, do you? At any rate, Alice and Dora were both killed. I alone was spared to exist in lonely solitude. But that is ended now. You and your sister will become my daughters. I will be firm with you, but always understanding."

Helen's teeth were chattering from the strange, numb cold that had crept over her. "No!" she cried. "No! No!"

The old man shrugged his heavy shoulders. "It is your choice, entirely," he said. "I doubt they would electrocute your sister; she is so young and lovely. But she will spend her life behind gray prison walls, that is certain. I saw it all. I saw her strike him down. When he left, I saw how he staggered. I know something of these head injuries. It takes a little while to die after one is inflicted. I watched him through my front window as he reeled out into the deserted street. He fell. I went out and examined him. His heart had stopped. I called the police, but I did not tell them my name. They rang the superintendent's apartment and talked to him. I listened through the crack of my door. But the superintendent knew nothing. If I move in here and I am questioned, I will swear I was with you all evening. Any father would do that much for his daughters."

The old man paused, sighed, waggled his bald head. "But if you refuse — then I must tell what I know, of course, as any good citizen doing his duty would."

Someone cried out. Marcia was standing in the room supporting herself against the bedroom door. Her eyes were wild and glazed.

"Don't call the police!" she begged. "Oh, please, Helen, don't let him!"

The old man rose from the chair. He was remarkably agile for a fat old man. He crossed the room rapidly and gave Marcia a resounding slap in the face.

"Go to your room, Dora!" he thundered. "Your sister and I will arrange matters."

And matters were arranged, because there was nothing else to do. At least, the dazed and terrified Helen could think of nothing else to do. And Marcia had fled to her bed. The covers were pulled up around her head and the bed, shook with her sobbing.

Mr. Heavenridge moved in that night. He took the room which had served as Helen's bedroom-studio. Helen had to move into the small room with Marcia.

Mr. Heavenridge said that loud sounds disturbed him. He could not abide street noises and he disliked sunlight. He kept all the windows shut, and the blinds lowered. He called the business office of the telephone company at once and had the phone service discontinued. He removed the tubes from the television and radio receivers.

The apartment became insufferably stuffy; it no longer had its pleasant girl-smell of perfume and powder and scented soap and fresh flowers. It took on the overwhelming, heavy odor that clung to the old man. The two girls had only one closet between them for all their clothes, for he claimed the others. This problem was alleviated, in a sense, by a dictatorial step that the old man took. He made an inventory of their wardrobes and if he considered a garment immodest, he ripped it to pieces and suggested the fragments of cloth be used for dust rags.

On the very first morning, Helen found him examining her bank book and account books and personal correspondence. When she protested, he simply waved her away, and chided her for rising at so late an hour.

"From now on," he said, "you and your sister will rise at six-thirty. That is my accustomed hour. I will expect to have my breakfast on the table by seven sharp."

He demanded that they retire at ten-thirty. One evening he found a light showing beneath the girls' bedroom door after the hour he had set. He stormed in and detached all the light bulbs. From then on, he removed the light bulbs every night at the bedtime he had ordered.

He called the sisters "Alice" and "Dora." He brought a heavy family Bible from his apartment and required one of them to read to him every evening, as his daughters had done, for an hour or more. He was especially fond of passages from the Book of Revelations.

He was an enormous eater. He preferred food heavily seasoned with garlic and went into a towering rage if a window of the kitchen was opened while a meal was being cooked. He was inordinately fond of strong cheeses that he kept ripening on kitchen shelves. Often he would sit and listen to Marcia or Helen reading the Bible, while he nodded his egg-bald head and licked Limburger or Liederkrantz from his soiled fingers.

Sometimes Helen thought that he was senile, completely out of his mind. He would charge them with pranks and misdeeds that his two daughters had apparently committed when they were children. He did not hesitate to slap them and rain blows on them when he was displeased.

He was a messy old man. He spewed ashes over the carpets. He burnt the polished wood of tables with his smoldering cigar butts. He said that he was afraid of slipping in the bathtub. So, when he bathed at all, he took sponge baths at the bathroom sink. He would splash a pool of soapy water over the tile floor, for the girls to clean away.

They were not only his daughters, his servants, his cooks, his companions. They also served as his nurses. He took several different kinds of medicine. There was a liquid for his dyspepsia which they had to give him at mealtimes. There were his vitamins first thing in the morning. He had a weak heart and high blood pressure. For these ills, he kept white pills in a little vial on the bathroom shelf. He warned them to give him a pill promptly if he had a seizure. One of the girls had to rub his flabby old back with alcohol every night.