Выбрать главу

A hot swarm of sound:

“You can’t get prints off human skin.”

“In China, the laborers make sixty-five dollars a year. How the hell can you live on sixty-five dollars a year?”

“So he took out his Luger and blew her head off.”

“I knew a policewoman who loved to scrub down whores.”

“Did you ever try to live with eight kids, two dogs, a three-legged cat and twelve goldfish?”

“Like I told him, those X rays destroyed his white cells.”

“They found her in the tub. Strangled with a coat hanger.”

“What I had, exactly, was a grade-two epidermoid carcinoma at the base of a seborrheic keratosis.”

Ashland experienced a sudden, raw compulsion: somehow he had to stop these voices!

The Chinese gong flared gold at the corner of his eye. He pushed his way over to it, shouldering the partygoers aside. He would strike it – and the booming noise would stun the crowd; they’d have to stop their incessant, maddening chatter.

Ashland drew back his right first, then drove it into the circle of bronze. He felt the impact, and the gong shuddered under his blow.

But there was no sound from it!

The conversation went on.

Ashland smashed his way back across the apartment.

“You can’t stop the party,” said the affable fat man at the door.

“I’m leaving!”

“So go ahead,” grinned the fat man. “Leave.”

Ashland clawed open the door and plunged into the hall, stumbling, almost falling. He reached the elevator, jabbed at the DOWN button.

Waiting, he found it impossible to swallow; his throat was dry. He could feel his heart hammering against the wall of his chest. His head ached.

The elevator arrived, opened. He stepped inside. The doors closed smoothly and the cage began its slow, automatic descent.

Abruptly, it stopped.

The doors parted to admit a solemn-looking man in a dark blue suit.

Ashland gasped “Freddie!”

The solemn face broke into a wide smile. “Dave! It’s great to see you! Been a long time.”

“But – you can’t be Fred Baker!”

“Why? Have I changed so much?”

“No, no, you look – exactly the same. But that car crash in Albany. I thought you were . . .” Ashland hesitated, left the word unspoken. He was pale, frightened. Very frightened. “Look, I’m – I’m late. Got somebody waiting for me at my place. Have to rush . . . He reached forward to push the LOBBY button.

There was none.

The lowest button read FLOOR 2.

“We use this elevator to get from one party to another,” Freddie Baker said quietly, as the cage surged into motion. “That’s all it’s good for. You get so you need a change. They’re all alike, though – the parties. But you learn to adjust, in time.”

Ashland stared at his departed friend. The elevator stopped.

“Step out,” said Freddie. “I’ll introduce you around. You’ll catch on, get used to things. No sex here. And the booze is watered. Can’t get stoned. That’s the dirty end of the stick.”

Baker took Ashland’s arm, propelled him gently forward.

Around him, pressing in, David Ashland could hear familar sounds: nervous laughter, ice against glass, muted jazz – and the ceaseless hum of cocktail voices.

Freddie thumbed a buzzer. A door opened.

The smiling fat man said, “C’mon in fellas. Join the party.”

Underground

J. B. Priestley

Location:  Northern Line, London Underground.

Time:  December, 1974.

Eyewitness Description:  “Through the gap, he saw for the first time a small figure sitting down. It had the face of an old-looking boy or rather a young-looking dwarf. He stared at this creature, who then met his stare with a widening of the eyes, old eyes, yellowish . . .”

Author:  John Boynton Priestley (1894–1984) was another of the 20th century’s most popular novelists and playwrights whose work, like that of A. E. Van Vogt, was influenced by the theories of J. W. Dunne. Initially a critic and journalist, he enjoyed a great success with The Good Companions (1929), a picaresque novel about English life and then broadened his output to include fantasy, science fiction and the supernatural. Two of his major plays, Dangerous Corner (1932) and Time and the Conways (1937) utilized Dunne’s theories with “timelines” opening up destructive events. He took the idea further in The Other Place (1953) and a non-fiction discussion, Man and Time (1964). Priestley’s novel, Benighted (1929) about a young couple forced to seek refuge in a haunted mansion, was made into a classic movie, The Old Dark House, in 1932, starring Boris Karloff and directed by James Whale of Frankenstein fame. It, in turn, inspired a whole series of “old dark house” films set in isolated rural properties plagued by ghosts. Priestley wrote several short stories with supernatural themes, including “Mr Strenberry’s Tale” (1930), “The Grey Ones” (1953) and, perhaps most unnerving of all, this next story written in 1974 about a ride on the underground that turns, inexorably, into a living nightmare.

Ray Aggarstone took the Northern Line from Leicester Square. It was some time since he had gone anywhere by Underground. Either he had used his car or had taken taxis for shorter journeys. But now that he was almost ready for what he liked to call, to himself but not to anybody else, the Big Getaway, he had sold his car for just over four hundred quid. Just showed you how useful it could be to chat somebody up, in this case that stupid sod who was always in the Saloon bar of the King’s Arms. While waiting on the crowded platform at Leicester Square, Ray told himself once again that he was careful as well as very clever. For instance, after that car deal and with a few drinks inside them, some fellows would have boasted about the Brazilian setup and the flight to Rio, but not Ray – not on your life! He had told this stupid sod exactly the same story he had told his mother and his wife, Cherry, now waiting for him somewhere near the end of this Northern Line. “Going to France, old man – Nice actually – where I’ve bought into a very promising property deal. Smart work, if I may say so.”

But of course he hadn’t shown him the letters he’d concocted to show his Mum and Cherry, now ready to part with eight thousand between them, about all they had. They were both so excited about his plan for them to join him at Nice within the next two or three weeks, like a pair of idiotic kids, they left business entirely to him, Mum’s clever handsome son, Cherry’s dominating, fascinating if occasionally unfaithful husband. Serve them right when he vanished with the two cheques he was going to collect – the silly cows!

No train yet but more people arriving on the platform. He changed his place, bumping and shoving a bit, if only to show these types what he thought about them. A run-down lot in a running-down country! He could never come back of course, not after those two women finally decided he’d robbed them blind, but he didn’t want to anyhow. He’d had it here all right – finish! He couldn’t blame Rita and Karl for sneering and jeering, even though now and again they got his goat, specially Karl. But that was early on, before they began to talk business.

The train came along, already more than half full. And because he hadn’t stood near the platform edge, though he pushed and shoved as hard as anybody, perhaps a bit harder than most, of course he didn’t get a seat – not a hope! So there he was, standing and swaying, wedged in with a lot of fat arses, smelly underclothes and bad breath. Looking around, disgusted, he couldn’t imagine now what had made him come down here when he might have hired a car, travelled in comfort and also impressed Mum and Cherry. So, to stop cursing himself, he began thinking about Rita and Karl again. After all he’d be meeting them in Rio in two or three days, and he began to wonder how things would work over there. Every time Karl, who was her husband all right, had gone to Manchester or Leeds and had stayed the night, he’d had Rita, a hot brunette if there ever was one, who’d start moaning if a finger touched a tit. Did Karl know, just guess, not care – or what? Anyhow, what Karl, a real businessman in the German-Swedish style, did know was that his friend, smart Ray Aggarstone, would be shortly financing most of the deal they’d worked out. Moreover, there must be plenty of hot moaning brunettes in Brazil.