Richard Matheson: Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

What stuff?

I don’t know. Greasy stuff. Like hot grease. It stunk awful.

And then you… you found…

Swish

I found them. Ma. And Pa. And the Lenottis. They was… Ohhh, I wanna…

Leo! What about the set, Leo? What about it?

Huh, what?

The picture on the set. You said something about it.

I, yeah… I…

It was the letters, wasn’t it, Leo?

Yeah, yeah. Them letters. Them big crooked letters. They was up there. On the set. I seen them. And… and…

What?

One of the E’s. It kinda… faded. It went away. And… and…

What, Leo?

The other letters. They come together. So… so there was only three.

And it was a word.

Swish swish swish

Take him to his aunt, Sergeant.

And the tube went black…

All right, Leo. The sergeant’ll take you ho—to your aunt’s.

I turned on the lights.

All right, Leo.

I turned on the light! Ma! MAMA!

Click

Seven pretty little girls sitting in a row.

Outside, night, pouring rain—war weather. Inside, toasty warm. Seven overalled little girls chatting. Plaque on the wall saying: P.G. CENTER. Sky clearing its throat with thunder, picking and dropping lint lightning from immeasurable shoulders. Rain hushing the world, bowing the trees, pocking earth. Square building, low, with one wall plastic. Inside, the buzzing talk of seven pretty little girls. “So I say to him—‘Don’t give me that, Mr. High and Mighty.’ So he says, ‘Oh yeah?’ And I say, ‘Yeah!’”

“Honest, will I ever be glad when this thing’s over. I saw the cutest hat on my last furlough. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to wear it!”

“You too? Don’t I know it! You just can’t get your hair right.

Not in this weather. Why don’t they let us get rid of it?” “ Men! They make me sick.” Seven gestures, seven postures, seven laughter’s ringing thin beneath thunder. Teeth showing in girl giggles. Hands tireless, painting pictures in the air.

P.G. Centre. Girls. Seven of them. Pretty. Not one over sixteen. Curls. Pigtails. Bangs. Pouting little lips—smiling, frowning, shaping emotion on emotion. Sparkling young eyes—glittering, twinkling, narrowing, cold or warm.

Seven healthy young bodies restive on wooden chairs. Smooth adolescent limbs. Girls—pretty girls—seven of them.

An army of ugly shapeless men, stumbling in mud, struggling along the pitch black muddy road.

Rain a torrent. Buckets of it thrown on each exhausted man. Sucking sound of great boots sinking into oozy yellow-brown mud, pulling loose. Mud dripping from heels and soles.

Plodding men—hundreds of them—soaked, miserable, depleted. Young men bent over like old men. Jaws hanging loosely, mouth gasping at black wet air, tongues lolling, sunken eyes looking at nothing, betraying nothing.

Rest.

Men sink down in the mud, fall on their packs. Heads thrown back, mouths open, rain splashing on yellow teeth. Hands immobile—scrawny heaps of flesh and bone. Legs without motion—khaki lengths of worm-eaten wood. Hundreds of useless limbs fixed to hundreds of useless trunks.

In back, ahead, beside, rumble trucks and tanks and tiny cars. Thick tires splattering mud. Fat treads sinking, tearing at mucky slime. Rain drumming wet fingers on metal and canvas.

Lightning flashbulbs without pictures. Momentary burst of light. The face of war seen for a second—made of rusty guns and turning wheels and faces staring.

Blackness. A night hand blotting out the brief storm glow. Windblown rain flitting over fields and roads, drenching trees and trucks. Rivulets of bubbly rain tearing scars from the earth. Thunder, lightning.

A whistle. Dead men resurrected. Boots in sucking mud again—deeper, closer, nearer. Approach to a city that bars the way to a city that bars the way to a…

An officer sat in the communication room of the P.G. Centre. He peered at the operator, who sat hunched over the control board, phones over his ears, writing down a message.

The officer watched the operator. They are coming, he thought. Cold, wet and afraid they are marching at us. He shivered and shut his eyes.

He opened them quickly. Visions fill his darkened pupils—of curling smoke, flaming men, unimaginable horrors that shape themselves without words or pictures.

“Sir,” said the operator, “from advance observation post. Enemy forces sighted.”

The officer got up, walked over to the operator and took the message. He read it, face blank, mouth parenthesized. “Yes,” he said.

He turned on his heel and went to the door. He opened it and went into the next room. The seven girls stopped talking. Silence breathed on the walls.

The officer stood with his back to the plastic window. “Enemies,” he said, “two miles away. Right in front of you.”

He turned and pointed out the window. “Right out there. Two miles away. Any questions?”

A girl giggled.

“Any vehicles?” another asked.

“Yes. Five trucks, five small command cars, two tanks.”

“That’s too easy,” laughed the girl, slender fingers fussing with her hair.

“That’s all,” said the officer. He started from the room. “Go to it,” he added and, under his breath, “Monsters!”

He left.

“Oh, me,” sighed one of the girls, “here we go again.”

“What a bore,” said another. She opened her delicate mouth and plucked out chewing gum. She put it under her chair seat.

“At least it stopped raining,” said a redhead, tying her shoelaces.

The seven girls looked around at each other. Are you ready? said their eyes. I’m ready, I suppose. They adjusted themselves on the chairs with girlish grunts and sighs. They hooked their feet around the legs of their chairs. All gum was placed in storage. Mouths were tightened into prudish fixity. The pretty little girls made ready for the game.

Finally they were silent on their chairs. One of them took a deep breath. So did another. They all tensed their milky flesh and clasped fragile fingers together. One quickly scratched her head to get it over with. Another sneezed prettily.

“Now,” said a girl on the right end of the row.

Seven pairs of beady eyes shut. Seven innocent little minds began to picture, to visualize, to transport.

Lips rolled into thin gashes, faces drained of colour, bodies shivered passionately. Their fingers twitching with concentration, seven pretty little girls fought a war.

The men were coming over the rise of a hill when the attack came. The leading men, feet poised for the next step, burst into flame.

There was no time to scream. Their rifles slapped down into the muck, their eyes were lost in fire. They stumbled a few steps and fell, hissing and charred, into the soft mud.

Men yelled. The ranks broke. They began to throw up their weapons and fire at the night. More troops puffed incandescently, flared up, were dead.

“Spread out!” screamed an officer as his gesturing fingers sprouted flame and his face went up in licking yellow heat.

The men looked everywhere. Their dumb terrified eyes searched for an enemy. They fired into the fields and woods. They shot each other. They broke into flopping runs over the mud.

A truck was enveloped in fire. Its driver leaped out, a two-legged torch. The truck went bumping over the road, turned, wove crazily over the field, crashed into a tree, exploded and was eaten up in blazing light. Black shadows flitted in and out of the aura of light around the flames. Screams rent the night.

Man after man burst into flame, fell crashing on his face in the mud. Spots of searing light lashed the wet darkness—screams—running coals, sputtering, glowing, dying—incendiary ranks—trucks cremated—tanks blowing up.