Pentrip nodded solemnly, belying his mind’s frantic activity. What unsavory details might emerge during cross-examination? Might his own conduct be shown up in an unfortunate light?
“I suggest that you make a clean breast,” he advised. “Then plead guilty. At least you’ll be spared the strain of a wearing trial.”
“What will that mean to me?”
“It will mean…”
“A permanent residence with constant attendance,” cut in Inga. Or was that elderly voice Inga’s?
Subsequent events moved as smoothly as Pentrip could have wished. In next to no time Inga Coule was put safely away, out of reach of garden tools. Pentrip even assumed heroic stature in Brenda’s eyes. Had he not single-handedly subdued a dangerous criminal lunatic? He took full advantage of his improved status. One morning soon he intended to waken with Brenda’s chubby face on the pillow next to his.
When bedded he was grateful to discover that Brenda was virginal but enthusiastic. She went to sleep in his arms.
Such an awkward position is bound to affect anyone’s dreams, but the intrusion of old Miss Coule into his was unwarranted and inexcusable. Especially as Pentrip’s late client was wagging a twiglike finger at him.
“Ah, but I left nothing to you, Mr. Pentrip,” she insisted.
His sleeping self protested that he had merely done his best in a professional capacity and desired no higher reward.
“I want you to see things my way,” she decided firmly. “So I shall leave you my eyes.”
She faded rapidly as such dreams sometimes do. It was sufficiently vivid and nasty to wake Pentrip. The light of dawn filtered through his half-opened eyes. Brenda’s yielding body was still pressed against his. He turned his head to admire his lately conquered pink and white cherub.
But the face on the next pillow was even further gone in decay than Roger’s had been. Her cheekbone gleamed whitely through the rotten flesh. Eyesockets gaped dark and hollow. Was this how Miss Coule saw Brenda? But Miss Coule could not see anything. She was dead. Quite dead. Long since rotted away.
Pentrip jerked back in revulsion away from the horrid object near his face, his only consolation being that this was still part of the nightmare. He would wake up any moment now. His sudden movement disturbed Brenda. As she stretched and yawned, withered lips parted to reveal blackened gums. In the decomposing recesses of her mouth a pale shape wriggled suggestively. And it was not her tongue.
Brenda’s giggles eventually assured Pentrip that he was not still asleep. He had received Miss Coule’s final bequest: her eyes, long accustomed to the dark of the grave.
Could she do this? He remembered a letter that had been something quite different. Inga had taken her husband for an old woman. Now what should have been a fresh-faced girl…
“Kiss me, love,” gurgled Brenda, pulling him toward her.
As their lips met Pentrip began to squeal. He was still screaming when he was taken away. Two orderlies were necessary to restrain him.
Even now he lives a solitary life, with a peculiarly timid way of glancing at people and a tendency to scream if anyone approaches too near. He only eats under compulsion and then with his eyes shut. Psychiatrists have not yet agreed on the cause of his condition, but they keep him under observation. A peculiar case.
SLIPPAGE
by Michael Kube-McDowell
Michael Kube-McDowell is one of the newer writers on the scene, and one who is fast making a name for himself—as a writer of “hard” science fiction. First published in 1979, he has already appeared several times in Amazing, Analog, and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, as well as in a number of science fiction anthologies. Nonetheless, when “Slippage” appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine, editor T.E.D. Klein called the story “pure Twilight Zone from first line to last.” It is also pure terror.
Born in Philadelphia in 1954, Kube-McDowell attended high school in Camden, New Jersey and graduated from Michigan State University with an M.A. in science education. He and his wife, Karla (who contributed the “Kube” to the family name), currently are living in Goshen, Indiana (a state that seems to be attracting more than its share of science fiction/fantasy writers), where he reviews science fiction for two area papers in addition to doing “whatever other writing I can scrounge that pays.” He plans to begin writing full time soon, and he takes his work seriously: “The only hobby I have any time for anymore is hugging Karla. I once knew how to play the viola and the roster for the Phillies, but both are slipping away.”
It did not begin as a time of madness.
Richard Hall tossed his rain-dampened ski cap into the nearest chair and ran his fingers back through his thinning hair. “Elaine?” he called.
She appeared at the bedroom door and moved to hug him. “You look frazzled.”
“Am,” he said, face buried in her hair. “Fought half the morning with a dimwit from Human Resources who tried to tell me I don’t know my Social Security number. Took the IRS’s word over mine. Ha!”
“Take a short loving recharge,” she invited.
“Glad to,” he said, tightening his embrace.
“That’s enough,” she said, and pushed him back. “Choose: start dinner or get the mail in. My hands were full.”
“Mail, thank you.” He took the key from her hand and the stairs to the lobby, returning with six pieces of junk mail—one promising “Sexually Oriented Advertisements”—one bill, a letter from Elaine’s mom, and a tattered copy of the Cross Creek Weekly Chronicle. Cross Creek, which was every bit as small as its name implied, had been Hall’s birthplace and home for seventeen years. His mother still lived there, and the subscription was an annual gift from her, about which he had never had the courage to say, “Please don’t bother.” The paper came an average of three weeks late, by the cheapest class of mail, and the high point of it was frequently a list of where townspeople had gone on vacation or the weights of the 4-H sheep.
Settling back on the sofa and kicking off his shoes, Hall ripped out the staples and turned to the front page. He immediately frowned, and read quickly.
“Elaine?” he called. “Listen to this.”
“If it’s the balance of the Total Charge bill, I’d rather not hear it,” she called back.
“No—something in the Chronicle. They’re closing my old high school.”
“Why?” Elaine appeared, bringing him a cold soft drink.
“According to this, the school board decided that they could get better value sending the students over to the new consolidated high school in Atlasburg. Cross Creek High School was too rundown and had too few students. So the last day of classes will be—” Hall looked at his watch “—tomorrow. Oh—and they’re going to hold an all-class reunion as a kind of going-away party.”
“When’s that? You’ll want to go, won’t you?”
“It’s…” Hall scanned for the date. “It was yesterday,” he said, his voice dropping.
“Oh, Rick, I’m sorry. You missed it.”
“I’ve been meaning to get back and visit the teachers, my old friends… what happened to the six years, Elaine? It doesn’t feel like it’s been that long,” he said, shaking his head. “Listen to this: ‘Class officers will be assisting Mr. Hutchins and Principal Jane Warden in contacting all graduates.’ Jim Harris is our class officer, and he has my address. I should have heard from them before this.”
Elaine moved next to him and rubbed his shoulder, and he smiled at her.
“I feel cheated. It would have meant a lot to be able to be there. I haven’t really kept in touch with some people that were good friends, either.”