Clifford Simak - A Death in the House - And Other Stories

Carefully, noiselessly, he swung his feet off the bed, pulled them around until he could stand up. Coldness seeped into him as he stood there in the dark, coldness and a terrible sense of helplessness. He hopped, slowly, carefully, inch by inch. One hop, then another, would take him to the window.

Something tugged at his wrists and he halted, stood with cold sweat breaking out on him. His wrists not only were tied together, but were secured to the bed!

He pivoted cautiously and stared at the table with the lamp upon it. A lamp meant that there would be matches. He bent forward from the waist to bring his eyes closer to the table top, and there the matches were, a water tumbler full of them, sitting near the edge.

Cautiously, he hopped backwards, waggling fingers searching for the table’s edge. He found it and halted, forced his arms backward to carry the fingers to the water tumbler.

Awkwardly one finger caught the tumbler’s top, tipped it over so that the matches spilled on the table top. Scraping, fumbling, his fingers pulled the matches in a pile, then groped to find the rope that bound him to the bed.

Carefully, fumbling time after time, he piled the slack in the rope atop the matches, then stood rigid for a moment, gasping for breath.

What he had to do next would take steadiness, sureness. He could not flinch or fumble. If he knocked the matches on the floor, if he …

He managed to get a single match between two fingers, pressed the head against the table’s edge, then swiftly flipped it up. Light flared in the room and dancing shadows jigged along the wall.

He held his breath,, kept the fingers closed tight upon the flaming stick, carried it back until another finger touched the pile of matches and the rope, then dropped it.

For a moment nothing happened, then another match caught with a sputter and a second, then at least a dozen, with a sudden flare of flame and the smell of burning sulphur.

Sudden flaring heat bit into his hands and the matches flared again with a sudden puff, lighting the room with a ghastly yellow glare. Another odor came through the smell of sulphur, the stench of burning rope.

He waited and the flame of the burning match-heap bit into his hands. He waited while the shadows danced and died upon the wall, then suddenly heaved himself forward. The rope caught, held for a single instant, then snapped and hurled him forward, flat upon his face. He rolled onto his side, jack-knifed with his feet, heard the crash of the falling table as his boots slammed into it.

Sitting on the floor, he stared in horror at the flame that ate into the bedding. His thrashing feet had knocked the table over, dumped the burning matches squarely on the bed.

He heaved himself upright with a single motion, hopped desperately toward the window. Behind him the flames crackled angrily as they worked into the corn-husks. In a minute, he knew, the room would be an inferno, a roaring sheet of fire. Scant second were left to reach the window.

He stumbled and went to his knees, surged up again. The hot breath of the fire lapped against his back. Feet were running on the stairs and voices shouted. Someone had heard the table crash.

The window was before him and he gave one last hop. He stumbled and his body hit the wall and held. Desperately, he dragged his feet beneath him, lowered his shoulder to press against the window.

The boots were running across the floor just outside the door. There was no time to lose. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a sheet of flame curl toward the ceiling, leave the papered wall black and flecked with glowing ash.

The sash buckled beneath his straining shoulder and the window popped like the explosion of a gun. Glass tinkled on the floor and the sash crashed outward. A blast of air swept into the room and the flames leaped high, mushrooming on the ceiling.

Culver thrust his head and chest through the broken window, saw the sloping roof of a shed beneath him. Lucky, said his brain. Lucky that it’s there to break your fall.

He shoved with all the power that was in his feet, felt his body sliding out the window. A knife-like piece of broken glass slashed through his trousers and gouged into his thigh. Then he was falling. He hit the slant roof and rolled, then fell again.

The ground came up and smacked him, drove the breath from out of his lungs. He rolled and kept on rolling, out of the mud and into a patch of weeds.

Crouched in the weed patch, he tried to orient himself. There was the livery barn and a vacant lot and beyond that the Antlers Hotel. The hotel, he told himself, was the place to go.

He surged to his feet and hopped, hopped with every ounce of strength that was in his body. Grass caught at his feet and tripped him and he got up again, hopped on, in a desperate race with time.

Men were yelling on the street, feet were pounding on the sidewalks. Someone was shouting in a bull-like voice, over and over again: “Fire! Fire! Fire!”

He wasted precious seconds to glance over his shoulder, saw that the Crystal Bar was a mass of twisting flame all along its second story. He glanced around again, stared upward at the hotel windows, suddenly shouted at a figure standing in one lighted square.

“Nancy! Nancy! It’s Culver!”

He stumbled to his knees, fought his way upright again.

Nancy Atwood had opened her window, was leaning out.

“Nancy!” he shouted.

His feet caught on a discarded wooden box and he went down again into a tangled, beaten heap.

The ground was soft and cool beneath him and the shouting of the men out in the street was a muted sound, as if from far away. Culver lay face down and waited. His mind was, for the moment, blank, resting too from the horror of the fire, from the unreasoning fear of an animal that is trapped and cornered.

Beating hoofs went by and roused him, twisted him upward from the ground. A horse went past, mane flying in the garish light of the burning building, feet pounding in terror. Someone had gotten into the livery barn and was turning loose the horses before the fire could spread from the flaming barroom.

He struggled to his knees, tried to rise to his feet, sank back again when his tortured ankles screamed in pain. Other horses galloped past, wild eyes gleaming in the light. Above the yelling of the men out in the street came the clank of buckets. A fire-fighting line was being formed, passing buckets filled with water from man to man, probably to wet down the livery barn. For there could be no hope of saving the Crystal Bar. The place was a torch that towered into the night, a pillar of curling fire topped by dense black smoke, seen faintly in the first grayness of the coming dawn.

“Grant!”

Culver twisted around, saw the girl running toward him, coat wrapped about her, hair flying across her shoulders.

“Nancy!” he shouted. “Over here, Nancy.”

He struggled to his feet as she came up.

She stopped before him, for a moment said no word, staring at him, face flushed by the flaring fire.

“What happened?” she asked.

“There’s a knife in my vest pocket,” he told her. “That is, if it hasn’t fallen out. No, the lower one on the right.”

Her fingers found it, brought it out.

“It was because of Bob,” she sobbed. “You got into all this trouble because of what you did for him. He told me.”

He shook his head. “It was something else,” he said.

She hacked at the rope that bound his wrists and he felt it loosen and fall away. His arms fell to his side and he lifted them in front of him. The wrists looked like so much raw meat and the hands were streaked with blood.

“Now your feet,” said Nancy. “Sit down so I can get at them.”