Harlan Ellison - Web of the City

The other car slowed.

He grew worried. A twenty-dollar fine was nothing to look forward to. He pulled over, to allow the other car to pass. The other car stopped also. Then it was that he knew he was being followed.

The other car started up first however. And as he ground away from the shoulder, the town spreading out beneath the road on the right-hand slope, he sensed something terribly wrong.

The other car was gaining.

He speeded up himself, but it seemed as though he was standing still. The other car came up fast in his mirror, and, the next thing he knew, the left-hand lane was blocked by a dark shape. He threw a fast glance across, and in the dim lights of the other car’s dash, he could see the adolescently devilish face of Frenchie Murrow.

So that was it! He could not fathom why the boy was doing this, but for whatever reason, he was endangering both their lives. As they sped up the road, around the blind curves, their headlight shafts shooting out into emptiness as they rounded each turn, Mestman felt the worm of terror begin its journey. They would crash. They would lock fenders and plummet over the side, through the flimsy guard railing… and it was hundreds of feet into the bowl below.

The town’s lights winked dimly from black depths.

Or, and he knew it was going to be that, finally, a car would come down the—

Two spots of brightness merged with their own lights. A car was on its way down. He tried to speed up. The boy kept alongside.

And then the Studebaker was edging nearer. Coming closer, till he was sure they would scrape. But they did not touch. Mestman threw a glance across and it was as though hell shone out of Frenchie Murrow’s young eyes. Then the road was illuminated by the car coming down, and Frenchie Murrow cut his car hard into Mestman’s lane.

Herb Mestman slammed at the brake pedal. The Plymouth heaved and bucked like a live thing, screeched in the lane, and slowed.

Frenchie Murrow cut into the lane, and sped out of sight around the curve.

The bakery truck came down the hill and passed Mestman where he was stalled, with a gigantic whoosh!

FRENCHIE MURROW

This wasn’t no game for kids, and at least old man Mestman realized that. He hadn’t spilled the beans to Pop about that drag on the Bluffs Road. He had kept it under his lid, and if Frenchie had not hated Mestman so much—already identifying him as a symbol of authority and adult obnoxiousness—he would have respected him.

Frenchie held the cat aloft, and withdrew the switchblade from his boot-top.

The cat shrieked at the first slash, and writhed maniacally in the boy’s grasp. But the third stroke did it, severing the head almost completely from the body.

Frenchie threw the dead cat onto Mestman’s breezeway, where he had found it sleeping.

Let the old sonofabitch play with that for a while.

He cut out, and wound up downtown.

For a long moment he thought he was being watched, thought he recognized the old green Plymouth that had turned the corner as he paused before the entrance to the malt shop. But he put it from his mind, and went inside. The place was quite empty, except for the jerk. He climbed on to a stool and ordered a chocolate coke. Just enough to establish an alibi for the time; time enough to let Mestman find his scuddy cat.

He downed the chocoke and realized he wanted a beer real bad. So he walked out without paying, throwing at the jerk a particularly vicious string of curse words.

Who was that in the doorway across the street?

Frenchie saw a group of the Laughing Princes coming down the sidewalk, a block away. They were ranged in their usual belligerent formation, strung out across the cement so that anyone wanting past had to walk in the gutter. They looked too mean to play with today. He’d cut, and see ’em when they were mellower.

He broke into a hump, and rounded the corner. At Rooney’s he turned in. Nine beers later he was ready for Mr. Wiseguy Mestman. Darkness lapped at the edge of the town.

He parked the Studebaker in his own folks’ garage, and cut through the hedge to Mestman’s house.

The French doors at the back of the house were open, and he slipped in without realizing he was doing it. A fog had descended across his thinking. There was a big beat down around his neck some place, and a snare drummer kept ti-ba-ba-ba-powing it till Frenchie wanted to snap his fingers, or get out the tire jack and belt someone or get that fraykin’ cat and slice it again.

There was a woman in the living room.

He stood there, just inside the French doors, and watched her, the way her skirt was tight around her legs while she sat watching the TV. The way the dark line of her eyebrows rose at something funny there. He watched her and the fog swirled higher; he felt a great and uncontrollable wrenching in his gut.

He stepped out of the shadows of the dining room, into the half-light of the TV-illuminated living room.

She saw him all at once, and her hand flew to her mouth in reflex. “What do you—what…”

Her eyes were large and terrified, and her breasts rose and fell in spastic rhythm. He came toward her, only knowing this was a good-lookin’ broad, only knowing that he hated that bastard Mestman with all his heart, only knowing what he knew he had to do to make the Princes think he was a rough stud.

He stumbled toward her, and his hand came out and clenched in the fabric of her blouse, and ripped down…

She was standing before him, her hands like claws, raking at him, while shriek after shriek after shriek cascaded down the walls.

He was going to rape her, damn her, damn her louse of a big-dome husband, he was going to…

Someone was banging at the door, and then he heard, ever so faintly, a key turning in the lock, and it was Mestman, and he bolted away, out the French doors, over the hedge, and into the garage, where he crouched down behind his Stude for a long time, shivering.

HERBERT MESTMAN

He tried to comfort her, though her hysteria was beginning to catch. He had followed the boy after he had come home and found the cat. Sir Epicure had been a fine animal; quick to take dislike, even quicker to be a friend. They had struck it off well, and the cat had been a warmth to Herbert Mestman.

First the peeping, then the trouble on the Bluffs Road, and so terribly this evening, Sir Epicure, and now—now—

This!

He felt his hands clenching into fists.

Herbert Mestman was a calm man, a decent man; but the game had been declared, and it was no game for children. He realized, despite his pacifist ways, there were lice that had to be condemned.

He huddled Margaret in her torn blouse closer to him, soothing her senselessly with senseless mouthings, while in his mind he made his decision.

FRENCHIE MURROW

Mornings had come and gone in a steady, heady stream of white-hot thoughtlessness. After that night, Frenchie had stayed away from Mestman and his house, from even the casual sight of Mestman’s house. Somehow, and he was thankfully frightened about it, Mestman had not reported him.

Not that it would have done any good—there was no proof and no way of backing up the story, not really. A stray fingerprint here or there didn’t count too much when they lived next door and it might easily be thought that Bruce Murrow had come over at any time, and left them.

So Frenchie settled back into his routine.

Stealing hubcaps for pocket money.

Visiting Joannie when her old lady was swing-shifting it.

And then there were the Laughing Princes:

“Hey, man, you wanna get in the group?”

Frenchie was amazed. Out of a clear field of vision, this afternoon when he come into the malt shop, Monkey had broached the subject.