Francis Nevins - Night and Fear

Directly behind her, so close that if she moved another step or two she would have trodden on it, lay a hunched form. A dead girl, dark hair streaming over her face. One outstretched hand extended limply along the ground, as if in search of help. In its nerveless grasp was a white rosebud...

He was sitting there brooding into his empty cup again. Her hand came to rest gently on his coat sleeve, to show him she was there. She didn’t say anything about a date this time. He had no time for dates now. She had none either.

“Last night again,” he said tersely. “I told you how it would be.”

“Any luck so far?”

“Not a sign. He might just as well float through the air, for all the trace he leaves.”

“He must have bought the flower upstairs in the dance hall. He must have been up there earlier and has been saving it since.”

He shook his head. “Only one white rose was sold up there all night and to a man who had a different girl with him; we had the concessionaire look at the—” She saw him stop and gaze at her. “How did you know that? I didn’t tell you they sold flowers up there.”

“I... I must have read about it, somewhere.”

“You couldn’t have. It hasn’t been in any of the papers. We’ve kept as much of it out of the papers as we could. Just let them print a bald statement that an unidentified body was found.”

“I... I just imagined that they’d sell them in a place like that.”

“I’m glad you don’t go near places like that. I’m glad it couldn’t happen to you,” he said fervently.

He didn’t know how close it had come to happening to her.

A white armband, seeming to float detachedly through the darkness like some sort of ghostly apparition, without any visible arm to support it, came to a halt in front of the doorway. A pocket-light winked on and threw a cartwheel of light against the doorway. The figure of a girl was revealed, pressed against one side of the wall. About five-feet six or seven, black hair cascading down her back, a cheap little coat belted around her. She put her hand to her face to ward off the light.

The air raid warden grunted, “That’s not a very good place, but stay where you are until you hear the all-clear. It’s due in another minute.”

The light clicked off and the detached armband floated away on the darkness.

In two or three minutes the light had winked on again, this time far down the street. Pointed at somebody else, in another doorway. This time the cartwheel was no bigger than a poker chip, from where the girl peered out around the edge of her own sheltering-place. Who or what it fell on could not be seen. Then it snuffed out, and receded still farther into the night-blind distance.

The short blasts of the all-clear began to sound in the distance, coming nearer all the time as they were relayed from one siren to the next.

Ginny Trowbridge’s foot made a soft little tick as it descended from the doorstep and she resumed her interrupted way along the street. A scanty light returned to the desolate scene, but somehow only made it more desolate. A car that had been parked two or three blocks away meshed gears and whined off into the distance, the sound carrying clearly in the new stillness that had followed the all-clear. A row of widely-separated street lights went on in unison and struggled in vain against the darkness. Hooded as they were, they only shone downward in a straight line, each one making a little pale puddle beneath itself.

Her shoes struck a clean-cut, brisk little tap along the echoing street. It was the only sound in the silence around her. It was as though she was the only thing moving in the whole spellbound city.

She passed the doorway where the warden’s torch had given its second flicker of investigation. Its occupant, if there had been one, must already have left. It was an impenetrable mass of obscurity now. Yet she had a curious sense of someone’s eyes being on her as she walked past it. She tried to shake it off but the dim feeling persisted.

She even turned her head to look back. At that very minute the glow from the nearest street light glanced over her, revealing her as in a snapshot. Then the tap of her footfalls went on into the darkness on the other side.

Suddenly it was no longer alone in the brooding stillness. Another tread had joined in, was subtly underscoring it, somewhere behind her. It was impossible to tell just when the accompaniment had set in. At the first moment of awareness it was already there, in full progress, blending in with the sharper rhythm of her own steps.

It was a quiet tread, unhurried and deliberate. At first it held no alarm for her. Somebody had left a second doorway, that was all. It might be that one she had passed just now, or it might be some other one.

It was easily recognizable as a man’s tread. But it wasn’t conspicuous. In fact, it was sometimes hard to catch at all. Then each time she thought it had died out, it would come back again.

It would diverge soon, go off in a direction of its own, she told herself. No two people were ever likely to maintain the same course for more than two or three blocks.

The two or three blocks passed and still it came on.

She put it to a test. She crossed over to the other side of the street. It would stay over on the first side now. It didn’t. It crossed over after her. She could tell by the change in resonance when it stepped down and stepped up again on this side.

It was following her.

She came to a corner and turned down the side street. That would tell. That would be the final test.

It dwindled for a minute, then it rang out clear again. It had come around the corner after her.

It wasn’t hurrying. It didn’t seem to want to overtake her so much as to keep pace with her. It was patient. It was biding its time.

She quickened her steps. It quickened in turn. Then, though her impulse was to run, she forced herself to slacken, to come almost to a halt. The tempo of steps behind her slowed up. It did whatever she did. It was stalking her. She was its quarry.

She could have escaped. Not on foot, perhaps. But there was the subway into which it would probably not follow her. There were taxis. But she didn’t want to escape. She wasn’t trying to save her own skin. If she had wanted to, she wouldn’t have been out alone on the streets.

She purposely tried to maneuver it into revealing itself, this anonymous tread that had no body. The dim-out regulations, even now that the lights were on again, didn’t give her many opportunities. But she tried to use the few that existed. Store windows, which would have suited her purpose best of all, were all rigidly dark now that it was late. There remained only the street lights and an occasional building entrance. It skirted both types alike with satanic dexterity — sidled around the dark outside of the lights whenever she hoped to see it pass directly under them. The most she could ever see was an anonymous black outline gliding by just beyond the range of the light.

He — if it were he — was smart. While she was still alive, she wouldn’t see him. Only when she was about to die would she see him. Then it would be too late. Terry had said, “Only the dead see him, and they can’t tell about it afterward.”

She had the courage to keep moving slowly ahead of him, but not enough courage to stand still, waiting for him to come up to her. She had to keep on walking — hoping that he would try soon.

He might be uncertain yet that she was the fever-image he took her to be. That might be the reason for the long delay in striking. She tried to egg him on, to convince him. When she came to a place where there was slightly better light, she stopped and held herself under it, almost posing, turning this way and that as if uncertain of her direction. Even from a distance her height, her black hair and all the other details must have stood out conspicuously.