He crossed the street, his breath jangling in his ears like dog tags.
He shot a glance at the patch of sky and the dark figure of his wife.
His pace quickened.
As he headed over a lawn, a young man bolted out of the shrubs, a pair of horn-rimmed glasses clattering from his face.
With Ritz crackers and a five-pack of Hydrox cookies in one hand, she drew the knob toward her, cutting the sliver of light from Kathy’s room, and made for the stairs.
There was a knock on the front door.
The stairway was an unknown in the dark. She waited.
Finally, “Sharon? Can you get that?”
The knock again.
She descended, pressing against the wall.
“Just a—” She felt a catch in her throat. Why?
The door swung open.
The kid was squirming on the lawn, his face jumping.
“Whatsa matter? I’m on my way home from a study date! Whatsa matter?”
Joe closed the cuffs, pressed the key into the notch, and set the lock.
Something in the young man’s face, swarming in a film of sweat, refused to let Joe relax. He shoved the glasses at him and pulled him to his feet.
He glanced ahead. The sky was dark, too dark to see her.
He whipped up the antenna on his walkie-talkie. It shook in his hands, waving back and forth in the night air.
She saw a woman, backlighted in the open doorway.
“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “But I wonder if you’ve seen my husband. He was supposed to meet—”
“No, I—” stammered Lissa. “Do you mean he was outside?” Where was Sharon? Where? She left the doorway. “Just a minute, okay?”
She felt around the room. “Share?” she called. I know, she thought. She was hungry. I’ll check the kitchen. If I can only find the light! “Sha-ron!” she called, and wondered why her voice was breaking.
“We don’t want to hurt you,” Joe said. “Believe that.”
He drew his prisoner through the shrubs, crushing twigs and unseen garden creatures in his path.
He turned up the gain and depressed the call button. He needed back-up. His throat was dry and the back of his tongue hurt.
A shrill electronic sound whined close by. Instantly he recognized it. It was feedback—his own signal being picked up on another receiver.
“I guess you wouldn’t know who I mean,” the woman said from the doorway. “But he’s one of the Security . . .”
It’s so dark, thought Lissa at the door to the kitchen. She forced herself across the chill linoleum, her arms outstretched like antennae.
She heard a sound—a low voice. It was singing:
A wind from nowhere blew through her chest.
He pushed the kid ahead of him, following the sound.
Louder. Joe was relieved. Reinforcements were near.
Then he noticed his prisoner’s stare.
At the rear of the last house by the parking lot, dark shapes were moving.
She seemed to swim through darkness past the smooth pulsating refrigerator where there were always tooth marks in the cheese, to the drawer from which the tools had been quietly disappearing for weeks, clamoring for something, anything with which to protect herself. It was silly, she knew, but—there. A butcher knife.
Joe released his own wrist and locked the kid to the branch of what might have been a rubber tree.
“We’ll be back for you, Charlie,” he said.
She felt herself drawn down the short stone steps from the kitchen to the storage porch, to the low singing and other voices and what sounded like a scratching close to the screen door that opened into the back yard.
The officer plunges through the shrubbery. At that someone slams out the back door, sees dark forms and the girl held to the dirt and reflexly cocks back an arm, white moons rising on the nails that clench the knife.
The officer sees the downed girl, uniforms, another figure lunging into it. There is no time to question, not now while there is still time to stop it before it happens again. He remembers them sitting there dumbly in their baggy pajamas, their wooden bowls empty of the ice cream a few minutes before it happened, and how he had gone away and done nothing, not even when he heard the laughter and the grunting and the automatic fire. And the screams. But not this time. He dodges and grabs the empty hand, wrenching it into a hammerlock as he encircles the waist with his left arm, releasing the wrist with his right and setting his forearm under the chin. The back arches and the legs kick madly, but the hand refuses to let go the knife. Faces turn up. One of the officers stays atop their victim. It is Williams who closes in from the front, spreading his milky palm across the distorted mouth, covering it.
“Nice going, Joe.” He grins. “Now you’re one of us, too.”
Joe does not yet understand. Now he feels a slip in the neck and the body swings like the clapper of a bell in his arms. Now he hears new footsteps behind him and a sudden skull-splitting screech. It is the scream of a woman. He thinks he recognizes it but it is too late, now it really is too late as the girl in his arms swings one last anguished time, as her knife slices at the dark with a flash and he sees a face reflected in the blade for an instant before it drops into the leaves. But he must know what he has seen. He has seen the face of a killer. It is the same face he has always seen.
The moonlight washes down on them all.
GRADUATION
by Richard Christian Matheson
Richard Christian Matheson bears the cross of being the son of famed writer Richard Matheson. It is not easy to follow in the footsteps of a famous father, especially in his same field; however, Richard has many credits other than his genealogy. At seventeen he became the youngest advertising copywriter employed by the national advertising offices of J. C. Penney, then he taught creative writing for a while, attended Cornell University, and went into free-lance advertising work. He (along with the late Charles Beaumont’s son) sold a script to TV’s “M*A*S*H” and now has a potential TV-series idea on parapsychology under serious consideration by two major outlets. “Graduation” is a story that shows both the influence of the elder Matheson and the talents of this newcomer. It is a chilling story that could have been made right at home for an episode of “Twilight Zone,” if that show was still around.
January 15
Dear Mom and Dad:
It has been an expectedly hectic first week; unpacking, organizing, getting scheduled in classes, and of course, fraternizing with the locals to secure promise of later aid should I need it. I don’t think I will. My room is nice though it has a view which Robert Frost would scoff at; perhaps a transfer to a better location later this semester is possible. We’ll see.
I had a little run-in with the administration when I arrived; a trivial technicality. Something about too much luggage. At least more than the other dormitory students brought with them. I cleared it up with a little glib knowhow. As always. Some of the guys on my floor look as if they might be enjoyable and if I’m lucky maybe one or two will be interesting to talk to as well. But I can’t chase after “impossible rainbows.” That should sound familiar, Dad, its from your private collection and has been gone over a “few” times. A few. But maybe this time, it’s true. Anyway, the dormitory looks as if it’s going to work out well. Pass the word to you-know-who. I’m sure it will interest him.