In order to scare the Thing off, you had to run, leap up, grab the chain and yank the light on!
So, blind and battering walls, you jumped. But could never find the chain never find the chain!
Don"t look up! you thought. If you see It It, and it sees You! No. No!
But then your head jerked. You looked. You screamed!
For the dark Thing was lurching out on the air to slam flat down like a tomb lid on your scream!
"Anyone home home...?" he called, softly.
A damp wind blew from above. A smell of cellar earths and attic dusts touched his cheeks.
"Ready or not," he whispered. "Here I come."
Behind him, slowly, softly, the front door drifted, hushed, and slid itself shut shut.
He froze. Then he forced himself to take another step and another.
And, Christ! it seemed he felt himself... shrinking. Melting an inch at a time, sinking into smallness, even as the flesh on his face diminished, and his suit and shoes became too large What am I doing doing here? he thought. What do I here? he thought. What do I need need?
Answers. Yes. That was it. Answers Answers.
His right shoe touched....
The bottom of the stairs.
He gasped. His foot jerked back. Then, slowly, he forced it to touch the step again.
Easy. Just don"t look up, he thought.
Fool! he thought, that"s why you"re here. The stairs. And the top of the stairs. That"s it it!
Now...
Very quietly, he lifted his head. To stare at the dark light bulb sunk in its dead white socket, six feet above his head.
It was as far off as the moon.
His fingers twitched.
Somewhere in the walls of the house, his mother turned in her sleep, his brother lay strewn in pale winding sheets, his father stopped up his snores to-listen.
Quick! Before he wakes wakes. Jump!
With a terrible grunt he flung himself up. His foot struck the third step. His hand seized out to yank the light-chain there there. Yank Yank! And there again again.
Dead! Oh, Christ. No light. Dead! Like all the lost years.
The chain snaked from his fingers. His hand fell.
Night. Dark.
Outside, cold rain fell behind a shut mine-door.
He blinked his eyes open, shut, open, shut, as if the blink might yank the chain, pull the light on on! His heart banged not only in his chest, but hammered under his arms and in his aching groin.
He swayed. He toppled.
No, he cried silently. Free yourself. Look! See See!
And at last he turned his head to look up and up at darkness shelved on darkness.
"Thing...?" he whispered. "Are you there?"
The house shifted like an immense scale, under his weight High in the midnight air a black flag, a dark banner furled, unfurled its funeral skirts, its whispering crepe. Outside, he thought, remember remember! it is a spring spring day. Rain tapped the door behind him, quietly. day. Rain tapped the door behind him, quietly.
"Now," he whispered.
And balanced between the cold, sweating stairwell walls, he began to climb.
"I"m at the fourth step," he whispered.
"Now I"m at the fifth..."
"Sixth! You hear hear, up there?"
Silence. Darkness.
Christ! he thought, run, jump, fell out in the rain, the light-!
No!
"Seventh! Eighth."
The hearts throbbed under his arms, between his legs.
"Tenth-"
His voice trembled. He took a deep breath and- Laughed! G.o.d, yes! Laughed Laughed!
It was like smashing gla.s.s. His fear shattered, fell away.
"Eleven!" he cried. "Twelve!" he shouted. "Thirteen!!" he hooted. "d.a.m.n you! h.e.l.l, oh G.o.d, h.e.l.l, yes, h.e.l.l! And fourteen!"
Why hadn"t he thought of this before, age six? Just leap up, shouting laughs, to kill that Thing forever!?
"Fifteen!" he snorted, and almost brayed with delight.
A final wondrous jump.
"Sixteen!"
He landed. He could not stop laughing.
He thrust his fist straight out in the solid dark cold air. The laughter froze, his shout choked in his throat. He sucked in winter night.
Why? a child"s voice echoed from far off below in another time. Why am I being punished? What have I done done?
His heart stopped, then let go. His groin convulsed. A gunshot of scalding water burst forth to stream hot and shocking down his legs.
"No!" he shrieked.
For his fingers had touched something...
It was the Thing at the top of the stairs.
It was wondering where he had been.
It had been waiting all these long years....
For him to come home.
Colonel Stonesteel"s Genuine Home-made Truly Egyptian Mummy
That was the autumn they found the genuine Egyptian mummy out past Loon Lake.
How the mummy got there, and how long it had been there, no one knew. But there it was, all wrapped up in its creosote rags, looking a bit spoiled by time, and just waiting to be found.
The day before, it was just another autumn day with the trees blazing and letting down their burnt-looking leaves and a sharp smell of pepper in the air when Charlie Flagstaff, aged twelve, stepped out and stood in the middle of a pretty empty street, hoping for something big and special and exciting to happen.
"Okay," said Charlie to the sky, the horizon, the whole world. "I"m waiting. Come on!"
Nothing happened. So Charlie kicked the leaves ahead of him across town until he came to the tallest house on the greatest street, the house where everyone in Green Town came with troubles. Charlie scowled and fidgeted. He had troubles, all right, but just couldn"t lay his hand on their shape or size. So he shut his eyes and just yelled at the big house windows: "Colonel Stonesteel!"
The front door flashed open, as if the old man had been waiting there, like Charlie, for something incredible to happen.
"Charlie," called Colonel Stonesteel, "you"re old enough to rap. What is there about boys makes them shout around houses? Try again."
The door shut.
Charlie sighed, walked up, knocked softly.
"Charlie Flagstaff, is that you?" The door opened again, the colonel squinted out and down. "I thought I told you to yell yell around the house!" around the house!"
"Heck," sighed Charlie, in despair.
"Look at that weather. h.e.l.l"s bells!" The colonel strode forth to hone his fine hatchet nose on the cool wind. "Don"t you love autumn, boy? Fine, fine day! Bight?"
He turned to look down into the boy"s pale face.
"Why, son, you look as if your last friend left and your dog died. What"s wrong? School starts next week?"
"Yep."
"Halloween not coming fast enough?"
"Still six weeks off. Might as well be a year. You ever notice, colonel...." The boy heaved an even greater sigh, staring out at the autumn town. "Not much ever happens around here?"
"Why, it"s Labor Day tomorrow, big parade, seven cars, the mayor, maybe fireworks-er." The colonel came to a dead stop, not impressed with his grocery list. "How old are you, Charlie?"
"Thirteen, almost."
"Things do tend to run down, come thirteen." The colonel rolled his eyes inward on the rickety data inside his skull. "Come to a dead halt when you"re fourteen. Might as well die, sixteen. End of the world, seventeen. Things only start up again, come twenty or beyond. Meanwhile, Charlie, what do we do to survive until noon this very morn before Labor Day?"
"If anyone knows, it"s you, colonel," said Charlie.
"Charlie," said the old man, flinching from the boy"s clear stare, "I can move politicians big as prize hogs, shake the Town Hall skeletons, make locomotives run backward uphill. But small boys on long autumn weekends, glue in their head, and a bad case of Desperate Empties? Well..."
Colonel Stonesteel eyed the clouds, gauged the future.
"Charlie," he said, at last. "I am moved by your condition, touched by your lying there on the railroad tracks waiting for a train that will never come. How"s this? I"ll bet you six Baby Ruth candy bars against your mowing my lawn, that Green Town, upper Illinois, population five thousand sixty-two people, one thousand dogs, will be changed forever, changed for the best, by G.o.d, sometime in the next miraculous twenty-four hours. That sound good? A bet?"
"Gosh!" Charlie, riven, seized the old man"s hand and pumped it. "A bet! Colonel Stonesteel, I knew you could do it!"
"It ain"t done yet, son. But look there. The town"s the Bed Sea. I order it to part part. Gangway!"
The colonel marched, Charlie ran, into the house. "Here we are, Charles, the junkyard or the grave yard. Which?" The colonel sniffed at one door leading down to raw bas.e.m.e.nt earth, another leading up to dry timber attic.
"Well-"
The attic ached with a sudden flood of wind, like an old man dying in his sleep. The colonel yanked the door wide on autumn whispers, high storms trapped and shivering in the beams.
"Hear that, Charlie? What"s it say?"
"Well-"
A gust of wind blew the colonel up the dark stairs like so much flimsy chaff.
"Time, mostly, it says, and oldness and memory, lots of things. Dust, and maybe pain. Listen to those beams! Let the wind shift the timber skeleton on a fine fell day, and you truly got time-talk. Burnings and ashes, Bombay snuffs, tomb-yard flowers gone to ghost-"
"Boy, colonel," gasped Charlie, climbing, "you oughta write for Top Notch Story Magazine Top Notch Story Magazine!"