Fritz Leiber - Horrible Imaginings

It didn’t and they spent a quiet evening—not even Engstrand showed up—which could have been very pleasant had Alice been a bit less pre-occupied.

But about three o’clock he was shaken out of sleep by her trembling. She was holding him tight.

“He’s coming.” Her whisper was whistly, laryngitic.

“What?” He sat up, half pulling her with him. “I’d better give you another eph—”

“Sh! What’s that? Listen.”

He rubbed his face. “Look Alice,” after a moment, he said, “I’ll go downstairs and make sure there’s nothing there.”

No, don’t!” she clung to him. For a minute or two they huddled there without speaking. Gradually his ears became attuned to the night sounds—the drone and mumble of the city, the house’s faint, closer creakings. Something had happened to the street lamp and incongruous unmixed moonlight streamed through the window beyond the foot of the bed.

He was about to say something, when she let go of him and said, in a more normal voice, “There. It’s gone.”

She slipped out of bed, went to the window, opened it wider, and stood there, breathing deeply.

“You’ll get cold, come back to bed,” he told her.

“In a while.”

The moonlight was in key with her flimsy nightgown. He got up, rummaged around for her quilted bathrobe and, in draping it around her, tried an embrace. She didn’t respond.

He got back in bed and watched her. She had found a chair-arm and was looking out the window. The bathrobe had fallen back from her shoulders. He felt wide awake, his mind crawlingly active.

“You know, Alice,” he said, “there may be a psychoanalytic angle to your fear.”

“Yes?” She did not turn her head.

“Maybe, in a sense, your libido is still tied to the past. Unconsciously, you may still have that distorted conception of sex your aunt drilled into you, something sadistic and murderous. And it’s possible your unconscious mind had tied your allergy in with it—you said it was a dusty couch. See what I’m getting at?”

She still looked out the window.

“It’s an ugly idea and of course your conscious mind wouldn’t entertain it for a moment, but your aunt’s influence set the stage and, when all’s said and done, he was your first experience of men. Maybe in some small way, your libido is still linked to… him.”

She didn’t say anything.

Rather late next morning he awoke feeling sluggish and irritable. He got out of the room quietly, leaving her still asleep, breathing easily. As he was getting a second cup of coffee, a jarringly loud knocking summoned him to the door. It was a messenger with the shots from the Allergy Lab. On his way to the examination room he phoned Engstrand again, heard him promise he’d be over in a half hour sure, cut short a long-winded explanation as to what had tied up the electrician last night.

He started to phone Mrs. Easton’s place, decided against it.

He heard Alice in the kitchen.

In the examination room he set some water to boil in the sterilizing pan, got out instruments. He opened the package from the Allergy Lab, frowned at the inscription HOUSEHOLD DUST, set down the container, walked over to the window, came back and frowned again, went to his office and dialed the Lab.

“Renshaw?”

“Uh huh. Get the shots?”

“Yes, many thanks. But I was just wondering… you know, it’s rather odd we should hit it with household dust after so many misses.”

“Not so odd, when you consider…”

“Yes, but I was wondering exactly where the stuff came from.”

“Just a minute.”

He shifted around in his swivel chair. In the kitchen Alice was humming a tune.

“Say, Howard, look. I’m awfully sorry, but Johnson seems to have gone off with the records. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get hold of them ‘til afternoon.”

“Oh, that’s all right. Just curiosity. You don’t have to bother.”

“No, I’ll let you know. Well, I suppose you’ll be making the first injection this morning?”

“Right away. You know we’re both grateful to you for having hit on the substance responsible.”

“No credit due me. Just a…” Renshaw chuckled “… shot in the dark.”

Some twenty minutes later, when Alice came into the examination room, Howard was struck, to a degree that quite startled him, with how pretty and desirable she looked. She had put on a white dress and her smiling face showed no signs of last night’s attack. For a moment he had the impulse to take her in his arms, but then he remembered last night and decided against it.

As he prepared to make the injection, she eyed the hypodermics, bronchoscope, and scalpels laid out on the sterile towel.

“What are those for?” she asked lightly.

“Just routine stuff, never use them.”

“You know,” she said laughingly, “I was an awful ninny last night. Maybe you’re right about my libido. At any rate, I’ve put him out of my life forever. He can’t ever get at me again. From now on, you’re the only one.”

He grinned, very happily. Then his eyes grew serious and observant as he made the injection, first withdrawing the needle repeatedly to make sure there were no signs of venous blood. He watched her closely.

The phone jangled.

Damn,” he said. “That’ll be Mrs. Easton’s nurse. Come along with me.”

He hurried through the swinging door. She started after him.

But it wasn’t Mrs. Easton’s nurse. It was Renshaw. Found the records. Johnson didn’t have them after all. Just misplaced. And there is something out of the way. That dust didn’t come from there at all. It came from…

There came a knocking. He strained to hear what Renshaw was saying.

“What?” He whipped out a pencil. “Say that again. Don’t mind the noise. It’s just our electrician coming to fix the bell. What was that city?”

The knocking was repeated.

“Yes, I’ve got that. And the exact address of the place the dust came from?”

There came a third and louder burst of knocking, which grew to a violent tattoo.

Finishing his scribbling, he hung up with a bare “Thanks,” to Renshaw, and hurried to the door just as the knocking died.

There was no one there.

Then he realized. He hardly dared push open the door to the examination room, yet no one could have gone more quickly.

Alice’s agonizingly arched, suffocated body was lying on the rug. Her heels, which just reached the hardwood flooring, made a final, weak knock-knock. Her throat was swollen like a toad’s.

Before he made another movement he could not stop himself from glaring around, window and door, as if for an escaping intruder.

As he snatched for his instruments, knowing for an absolute certainty that it would be too late, a slip of paper floated down from his hand.

On it was scribbled, “LANSING, 1555 Kinsey Street.”

I bet a lot of these lads beef to you about their wives… you must get sick of it… but not me. I think Skinny’s wonderful. It isn’t every man has a wife who is loving, hardworking, brainy as they make them, talented seventeen different ways, and a professional dancer. You could draw me another beer. Hot as the hinges, isn’t it? Thanks.

I started calling her Skinny because she wasn’t meaty like the other girls, though she could outlast any ten of them dancing. They has nice enough figures if you go for that sort of thing, but they were meaty… not in the old-time beef-trust class, but the grits and greens and side meat showed. You know how they round them up. Lad goes south and puts an ad in the country papers: Girls One Hundred Dollars a Week. Likely looking ones he asks to strip. If they will and the figure’s okay they’re in.