The Seventh Pan Book of Horror Stories Part 7

No matter what he thought of, it kept pushing to the surface and began again from beginning to end.

Nelson lay on his bed and tried to sleep. Unable to, he fumbled with food and water and tried to eat and drink. He washed again and again until his body was raw from scrubbing. Still, regardless of what he did, the rats were always with him. He couldn't keep them out. Their noises were part of his life in his noiseless world. They were needed and he welcomed them. Gradually he realised that he was afraid they would leave him. When their sounds faded away for a few minutes, he bit his fingers until he drew blood.

He smiled as he lay on his bed, eyes closed, listening. Noises filled his thinking - it was as if there were rats in the cubicle. He was content, he was not afraid. After all, he a.s.sured himself, the sounds were in his mind, and he could turn them off whenever he wanted to.

The day grew longer and with each pa.s.sing hour he became increasingly troubled when rat sounds continued to be the only ones he heard, when they shoved all others back into silence. I wonder, he thought, can I really stop them if I try? If I wanted to? If I have to! Am I capable of even lessening their noise and dominance? If so, what would be the effect on me? I must know the answer.

He concentrated on pushing the rat sounds back. Slowly they diminished; the noise of their feet, their chewing grew faint. Gaps came when there was no noise.

No sound... no sound... nothing. A horrifying block of Boundlessness. No noise to lean on, to give him meaning, to give him rea.s.surance that an outside world existed.

No sound! his mind screamed and he concentrated wildly on bringing back the rats. 'Come back! he muttered, talking aloud to himself for the first time since he'd entered the room. 'Rats! come back.' He reached out with intense concentration, hungrily, almost frantically, and the creatures scrambled in for a moment. Then they went away; then came back again, but only partially. Slipping, slipping, they were slipping from him; their sounds were leaving him as if they were no longer conceived, controlled by his mind, but separate ent.i.ties with the ability to go and come as they pleased. They scuttled away from his grasp and disappeared.

Nothing. There was no sound now except the lonely beating of his heart, the gulping of the drink he needed so badly and the sob he couldn't hold back.

The rats and the radio show were gone.They had gone on their own. The words flashed like a neon sign in Nelson's mind, repeating themselves. Then the reason for the repet.i.tion came.

If the rats had gone on their own, then they could return on their own. His mind could no longer make the sounds the rats themselves could. If there were rats in the cubicle, they would make sounds and he would hear them, even though he wouldn't be able to see them.

Yes, he could hear them if they were here. And immediately he heard them, heard their busy feet in the corner of the room at the foot of his bed. Their squeaky noises were a re-a.s.suring, comforting sound. He smiled, relaxed - rat sounds were in his mind and all was right with his world. He listened for a moment, relaxed and satisfied, then sat up on the bed and looked toward the noise. Even in the pitch dark he could see a group of rats in the corner on the white floor.

A dagger of fear slit him. Pieces of his mind flew. He wanted to kick out, to scream. Then he realised he couldn't be seeing rats if it was too dark even to see the wall.

He was remembering the wall, that was what was happening. He was remembering how the wall looked when the lights had been on earlier. And, somehow, he was remembering rats. Of course, 'seeing' the rats was something in his mind, like hearing them. It was just a trick of his imagination.

He relaxed again on the bed. But now, instead of closing his eyes and listening, he continued to stare at the ceiling. Creeping into his thinking was an itch, an anxiety, a desire to do something. He fought it, then let the desire out. He said aloud, I want to go to the corner.:. feel to see if the rats are actually there.'

But he didn't, he stayed in the safety of his bed, wondering: Am I avoiding the corner because I'm afraid rats will be there, or because I'm afraid they won't?

Private Neff Nelson remained on his bed for hours and listened to the scurrying and nibbling of rats. Their noises filled his cubicle. They surrounded him and he was very happy. He eased his foot off the bed once to see if one would nibble at his toe, and he was disappointed when nothing happened. 'You little vermin,' he said, 'you don't know what you're missing.'

He didn't bother to eat or wash, and he found he wasn't thirsty. He didn't think about the outside now, or how long he had been inside the room. And he rarely thought any more about when they would come to let him out. He was happy in his dark world of never-ending sounds, soothing rat sounds, like a mother's cooing words.

Private Neff Nelson talked regularly now with the rats in his cubicle. It was a friendly relationship, one of the best he'd ever had. And his mind was doing it all. He had it made, he figured. He had so much that the others didn't have. Who else could spend a week in a dark, silent room, yet have so much company?

His mind was doing it all, he kept repeating to himself. And he had it under perfect control. I'm a pretty creative guy, he told himself. I might even decide to live in a room like this all my life. I'll think it over and let them know.

'What do you think about that, you rats?' he said.

'We don't like the idea,' one answered in a squeaky voice.

The private laughed. It was the first time one had answered him, the first time he'd actually heard one talk. It was a wonderful thing, this mind of his: it could make nonexistent rats talk.

'We don't like living with a nut,' another one said.

'Oh, you don't,' Nelson answered, smiling. 'Well, I don't like you either.'

'We're not joking,' another rat said. 'You're losing your mind.'

'He's lost it, you mean,' another squeaked disgustedly. 'Talking with rats... He's done for.'

'Now, come off it,' Nelson said. 'You know I'm making all this up.'

'Yeah,' two of them said together. 'Sure, sure.'

Nelson didn't like their tone. They were getting out of hand. 'I'm in control here,' he said, tightly.

Their sarcastic, squeaky laughs seemed to fill the room.

'G.o.ddam it!' he exploded, sitting up. 'When I want to talk to rats, I do! And when I want you to answer me, I make you 1 That's all there is to it!'

'He's losing his mind. He's lost his mind,' they chanted.

'Shut up, you filthy sneaks!'

'He's insane, he's insane,' they kept chanting.

'I'm not!' It was almost a scream.

'Insane, insane.'

'I'm not! I'm not!'

'Insane, insane,' their wailing tone mounted. Hundreds of tiny feet scampered on the floor in a whispering tempo. 'Insane, insane, the private's insane.'

'No, I'm not! No!' The last 'no' was a scream. It went tearing through the room, bouncing from wall to wall. 'No!'

'Insane, insane.'

'No! No! No!'

And light from the corridor suddenly flooded through the cubicle door.

The two research a.s.sistants in the control room had not known the experimental rats caged just inside the corridor had escaped through some defective wire mesh. Nor would they have learned of it until feeding time if it hadn't been for Nelson's screams. The men had recorded on tape his talking to himself from the beginning. They hadn't thought it unusual; they were used to strange talk over the microphone after the subjects had been in the cubicle a while. But when Nelson seemed to be losing control, when he started screaming in terror, they had run from the control room toward his cubicle and noticed, as they pa.s.sed the cage, that the experimental rats were loose. The researchers knew the rodents had to be in the hall some place.

They had opened the soundproof door at the entrance to the corridor, turned on the hall lights and the one in Nelson's room, and hurried to his cubicle. They saw his door was open a crack.

When they went into the cubicle, a flash of white fur scurried by their feet and into the hall. Nelson was sitting up in bed screaming at the other rats in the corner. The creatures, twitching their noses at the light, were trembling with fear.

One attendant realised immediately what had happened. The rats, after escaping from their cage, had scampered down the dark corridor to the end. There, finding Nelson's door open a crack, they had run inside.

But the attendant didn't know that when Nelson had repeatedly opened and shut the door he had unknowingly left it open enough for the rats to get in. The corridor was as dark as the room and no light had come in to let Nelson know it was open.

The attendant also didn't know why the volunteer kept screaming now.

Private Neff Nelson kept screaming 'No! no! no!' because the rats he had seen and talked to before were black, and the ones he saw now were white.

MARETA.

By John D. Keefauver.

Of course, I didn't know Mareta had killed him until a few days ago. But her admission of murder was negligible - nothing - compared to what I found in her bedroom closet the day after.

I shouldn't have gone into the closet, I know; it was dangerous. As soon as I saw the two bottles and the photographs, I should have left the room - left the house, fled. With the knowledge they gave me, it was suicidal to remain near her. That was her plan, I realise now: to let me discover her secret, then destroy me. But I had had no time to think; I had time only to act, and she had forced me to that.

Now, too late, I realise that she had left the bedroom door unlocked purposely. Curious, I had gone in. Oh G.o.d, if only I had kept out of the place! If your child sucks blood, isn't it better not to discover it? If your wife gives birth to a monster, wouldn't it be better never to know? Now... I am drained.

Drained, like her bottles. Her drinking; I never realised to what an extent it had gone. Drunk, she had told me how she murdered Victor, her second husband, her voice puffed with pride and hate and. and, yes, power. Power! Mareta bragged of what she had done, and she felt power even in the telling of it. Later, I understood something else: by her talk of murder she was purposely planting fear in me. She succeeded.

It had been his eyes, she had told me, smiling drunkenly, ironically. Victor's eyes. I knew about them; after all, I had been there that night she had killed him, although at that time I, along with everybody else, thought it had been an accident. I had heard the story of Victor's eyes for months after his death. Eyes. I can 'see' them now. Bound for the island of Hydra in the Aegean Sea, I was on a boat out of Athens when I met Victor and Mar eta. By chance we were standing side by side next to the railing, both gazing at the first island stop of the daily milk-run boat. Toothpaste-white houses, glittering in summer sun, marched irregularly down to the sea from island mountains. Impressive; but when I turned toward Victor to comment casually on the sight, I saw for the first time his eyes and they wiped out the picture of the storybook houses - forever.

They battered me, these eyes; they hurt. They were pain; they were fear. They were lost; they had been beaten. They were a hungry child.

Sweat, yes. They looked as if they were sweating - too wet, too oily. They glistened with fear, shone with fright.

Mareta, his wife then, had been standing beside him, of course - brilliant in a wind-whipped dress, hair dancing. Even then I felt her power - poised, sharp, penetrating, hard, like a knife. I felt her in my pores. She was small, almost dainty, standing next to her dark-skinned and bulky husband. Yet, even from the beginning I had the feeling, though vaguely, that he and his eyes made up a puppet, and that his wife, Mareta, deftly handled the strings - and that now she was tired, her fingers bored.

By the time we reached Hydra at noon, we had become acquainted enough to have lunch together. Talk came easily. I learned that they too planned on spending a few days on the island of some 3,000 souls, mostly fishermen, the rest tourists and artists, and that Victor, born in Greece, had moved to the United States as a child and was now visiting his parents in Athens. It turned out that the three of us were from the Los Angeles area, where he was in the wholesale fruit business and I taught high school. He told me he had been married to Mareta less than a year. And it was her second marriage, too, I learned; her first husband had drowned, she said. She was years younger than Victor.

In the beginning no one suspected, least of all I, that she was a killer. She did it that first night in quiet, sleeping Hydra, did it efficiently, effortlessly, and with pride. How she smiled in drunken humour months later - just a few days ago now - when she told me how simple it all had been. How easy. How stupid of him.

She had talked Victor into accompanying her on a midnight swim - she did such things with great charm. He did not swim himself, and now I realise that that was one of the reasons she married him - perhaps the most important reason. Did he suspect her? As I look back over my own relationship with Mareta, how I grew to suspect her, I think it possible that Victor did too. But after living with her almost a year, perhaps he wanted to die. Never mind - he died, and was I to be next?

They left their hotel - where I had a room too - and walked arm and arm (she underlined this point with a chuckle) out of the village proper, up a path along a nearby mountain side. She knew exactly where she was going. Years before she had visited Hydra with her parents; she had gone swimming with them in water beneath a lip of stone that jutted out from mountain rock some twenty feet above the sea. In the lip, out from the mountain enough to be over water, was a large hole. She had remembered the hole, how it would not be seen on a moonless night, how death could easily come there - either by falling on the sharp rocks in the shallow water or by drowning, or by both.

It was clever of her, she admitted. Clever that she arranged their trip to the island on a moonless night without Victor realising what she was doing. Clever that that same afternoon she had visited the spot alone, measuring her strides from a point on the path to the hole, measuring the distance carefully, so that that night she knew exactly where to stop and give Victor a push over the edge of the hole. He had given one short anguished yell as he dropped; she had heard his body splash into the water... 'a delightful sound.'

She'd waited. Victor did not come to the surface. Then, an excellent swimmer, she had dived in after him, ostensibly to help him, actually to see if he were dead, she told me. He lay on rocks beneath shallow water; he made no living move. She pushed his body into deeper water, she said, then rushed back to the hotel, screaming in wifely agony.

This I knew; for I had been awakened that night by the commotion caused by her announcement that her husband had fallen into the sea. I joined the fishermen and tourists and the village men of the law at the hole in the lip. I watched as they searched for his body. Currents had carried it out to sea. It wasn't found for days, days that I stayed with Mareta, comforting her in my innocence, listening to her talk of Victor, how her love for him had been so strong at first, how it had turned slowly into fear, fear of his eyes. Fear, as she had had of her first husband's eyes, the one before Victor, the one who had also drowned. Neither husband could swim, but it was only a few days ago that I suspected that she had deliberately picked husbands who could not swim. I cannot swim myself, and I became her third husband. And it was only days ago too that she told me that even if Victor had not drowned from the fall, even if he had accused her of attempted murder - it was of no matter; she was the power and the glory and no man and no law could touch her.

Mareta and I had gone out together each day to watch the search for Victor's body. We were on the sh.o.r.e the fourth day, the day his body washed out of the sea. One bystander had vomited, another had stumbled away. I myself cringed in horror at the sight of Victor's eyes - and at the sight of Mareta's when they laid the body out and she was asked, after much hesitation, to identify the body. I saw her expression. My G.o.d! how I wish I had not. I still 'see' it - more vividly now, even in my present condition. At the time I didn't believe what I saw; I thought my own eyes deceived me. So gruesome, so terrible, that flick, barely perceptible, of happiness on Mareta's face when she saw that both of Victor's eyes had been ripped from his head.

A fish, some monster of the sea, had ripped out Victor's eyes, was the consensus of Hydra fishermen and the law of the island. Some fish with a diabolical mind, they agreed. (Of course, there were cuts and slashes over most of his body, and his clothes were torn in many places.) Yes, the fishermen said, there were fish that could chew out a man's eyes. Perhaps there was a sweetness of a man's eyes that a fish liked. Perhaps they, the fishermen, should protect their own eyes every time they went into the sea. It was something to think much about.

The village shuddered at the tragedy; it was on the front page of the Athens newspapers. And when Victor was buried in the city, a stillness like the Parthenon in moonlight lay like a knot in my heart. I think my memory of Mareta's smile at Victor's eyeless face was poisoning me even then, but I didn't know it. I translated the emotion into love, pity.

Fear. It was to come later, sharp as a knife, after Mareta and I were married. She went back to Southern California after Victor's funeral, and I did too, though later and by a different route. I travelled through Europe for the summer, and by the time I got back to the Los Angeles area she had been there long enough, it appeared, to have forgotten Victor and their marriage. She had rid her home along the coast south of the city of all evidence of him. She had wiped him out, and within a week we were lovers, within a month we were married.

Looking back, seeking a reason why she married me, I can only come to the conclusion that it was mainly because I liked the water - sailing in her Mercury, lying on the beach beside her pool - but did not know how to swim. I had little money, but that was no problem: all her men - her father, her first husband, and Victor - had given her or left her money. My salary as a teacher was hardly needed. Of course, at first I thought she loved me. It did not take me long to find out how bitterly wrong I was.

And why did I marry her? I wonder myself, looking back on the marriage of only months ago. I am perplexed. I think it was because some of her - enough - rubbed off on me on the island of Hydra; her seed grew in me, like a cancer as it turned out. She came through my pores, growing all the time. She had a dazzling quality about her, a G.o.ddess power that said, I I admit you, you are very fortunate indeed.' She admitted me, and I plunged in. And her body. It was golden and sinewy, rich with curves and hunger; it fed on me. Our love-making was frenzied, almost combat. But as I look back, I see now that there was no love in her or her body; only hunger; it - she - took and never gave. And when her appet.i.te was appeased, she shoved me away. Within months she was tired of me. And soon fear came.

Fear. First it was disguised, like an itch in the soul; puzzling, like a stare from a stranger you feel you know - like the stare of Mareta that I came to know. Eerie, frightening, powerful, this stare of hers; it thrust itself at me, into me, exploring, prying. It was a power, a* weapon - and I began to better understand why I had married her. Power. She was power. Power attracts. And power destroys.

One afternoon beside the pool I became conscious of her stare to such an extent that I knew it was the focus point of my growing fear. I remember how sun glistened on her golden body and on an opened penknife she held in her hand; she had been peeling an apple. She was lying naked - we never wore suits at the enclosed pool - her head toward me. I was sitting in a beach chair beside her when sun caught the knife blade and a blinding ray hit my eyes. I brought my hand up quickly to shield my face, and she lowered the knife. She knew what she had done. She had done it purposely, I realised later. Then I felt the full impact of her stare; it hit me harder than the sun ray had. It came shooting from behind the knife blade, slashing my eyes. Then I saw too the flash of her smile, so quick that at that time I wasn't sure she had smiled. Later I realised that her smile was the same as the one she had let flick through her expression the day they brought Victor's eyeless body from the sea.

That night I could not sleep. Lying beside Mareta, I thought I felt her stare upon my face. But it was dark in the room; the mind plays tricks. I shrugged off the feeling and finally slept. Later I awoke and felt her fingers slowly, carefully, lightly, exploring my eyes. 'Yes?' I said. Immediately, silently, she withdrew her fingers. All I could hear was her breathing - fast, excited, as if we were making love.

From that day on she seemed to have her knife with her almost all the time. At the pool she used it to peel fruit, in the kitchen to cut vegetables. At night I saw it by our bed, on the bedstand beside her head, the blade always showing. She kept it razor sharp. It was very small, expensive, with a black ivory covering. It had only one blade, which she kept polished. She did not want me to handle the knife. I held it only once. She had left it, forgotten, on the bedstand once when she went into the bathroom; I picked it up. On either side of the blade, worn with age, were carvings of very delicate, probing, powerful eyes.

'Why do you use such a fine knife to peel vegetables?' I asked later.

'A knife should be used,' she said. And again I saw the flick of her ironic, secret smile. 'That's what my first husband said when he gave it to me.'

Fear. We were out in her Mercury one afternoon, a day in which heat waves shimmered like fire off the ocean. The wind had died, and although I could not swim I lowered myself over the side of the boat into the cooling water. Holding tightly onto the gunwale, I dipped my head into the ocean. When I looked up, Mareta was staring down at me, her secret smile escaping her face (too late; I saw!) her open knife near my fingers on the gunwale. When my face tilted toward hers, she lowered the knife quickly - too quickly? 'I thought I saw a shark,' she said.

She began to drink heavily, retreating each day from me into a world of alcohol and silence. I'd come home from work and find her in the bedroom, the door locked, no preparations made for dinner. More and more she kept her bedroom door locked all night, forcing me to sleep in a spare bedroom; and the nights we did sleep together she would not let me touch her and I awoke feeling her stare or her fingers on my eyes. She refused to explain her behaviour; she would not answer my questions.

'What is wrong? What have I done? Why afe you acting like this?'

She would only smile.

And when I persisted in my attempt to question her, she - never saying a word - moved out of our bedroom. I came home one evening and I could not find her. I searched the house. She had disappeared. Her car was in the garage. Thinking she was at the beach, I walked to the area where we frequently used to go. She was not there. When I got back to the house, she was in the kitchen preparing dinner, using her knife. She was drunk.

'Where have you been?'

She only smiled.

Often when I came home from work I could not find her in the house. Later, though, she would come down from upstairs, an upstairs I had just searched - including all bedrooms - without finding her. She refused to explain her whereabouts, to even talk, and I soon stopped asking her. I stopped looking for her in the house when I came home after work. I was very tired of it all - and afraid.

But one evening - just a few days ago now - she did not come down from her upstairs hiding place until after I had fixed my own dinner and read the paper. I was watching television, my back to the living room door, when I felt her hand on my neck, a warm caressing touch, like softened b.u.t.ter. I turned. She was naked.

She came around in front of me, blotting out the TV picture, swaying slightly; she had been drinking. Faint light behind me glazed her face; her ironic smile glittered in shadowy mirth. She stepped toward me, her arms came out. Her body touched me, I turned my face.

'What do you want?'

'Let's go out to the pool,' she said.

'No.'

'Take off your clothes, we'll go in together.'

'I'm going to bed.'

I stood up. She spread herself against me, like warm icing on a cake. Her arms twined around me. Her lips spread for my kiss.

'Now,' she said. 'At the pool.' I felt her thrust.

I pushed away.