something.
“So she was whining and bitching in her best ‘just call me Billie’ style, but I think it was just habit. She was excited and happy, Dex. Because she was finally going to be able to get control over the last…little…bit.”
He looked at Dex calmly. “I knew she’d come, you see. I knew she’d want to see what kind of mess you gotten yourself into, Dex.”
“They’re downstairs,” Henry told Wilma. Wilma was wearing a bright yellow sleeveless blouse and green pants that were too tight for her.
“Right downstairs.” And he uttered a sudden, loud laugh.
Wilma’s head whipped around and her narrow face darkened with suspicion. “What are you laughing about?” She asked in her loud, buzzing voice. “Your best friend gets in a scrape with a girl and you’re laughing?”
No, he shouldn’t be laughing. But he couldn’t help it. It was sitting under the stairs, sitting there squat and mute, just try telling that thing in the crate to call you Billie, Wilma – and another loud laugh escaped him and went rolling down the dim first-floor hall like a depth charge.
“Well, there is a funny side to it,” he said, hardly aware of what he was saying. “Wait’Il you see. You’ll think – ”
Her eyes, always questing, never still, dropped to his front pocket, where he had stuffed the rubber gloves.
“What are those? Are those gloves?”
Henry began to spew words. At the same time he put his arm around Wilma’s bony shoulders and led her toward the stairs. “Well, he’s passed out, you know. He smells like a distillery. Can’t guess how much he drank. Threw up all over everything. I’ve been cleaning up. Hell of an awful mess, Billie. I persuaded the girl to stay a bit. You’ll help me, won’t you? This is Dex, after all.”
“I don’t know,” she said, as they began to descend the stairs to the basement lab. Her eyes snapped with dark glee. “I’ll have to see what the situation is. You don’t know anything, that’s obvious. You’re hysterical. Exactly what I would have expected.”
“That’s right,” Henry said. They had reached the bottom of the stairs.
“Right around here. Just step right around here.”
“But the lab’s that way – ”
“Yes…but the girl…” And he began to laugh again in great, loonlike bursts.
“Henry, what is wrong with you?” And now that acidic contempt was mixed with something else – something that might have been fear.
That made Henry laugh harder. His laughter echoed and rebounded, filling the dark basement with a sound like laughing banshees or demons approving a particularly good jest. “The girl, Billie,” Henry said between bursts of helpless laughter. “That’s what’s so funny, the girl, the 89
girl has crawled under the stairs and won’t come out, that what’s so funny, ah-heh-heh-hahahahaa – ”
And now the dark kerosene of joy lit in her eyes; her lips curled up like charring paper in what the denizens of hell might call a smile. And Wilma whispered, “What did he do to her?”
“You can get her out,” Henry babbled, leading her to the dark.
triangular, gaping maw. “I’m sure you can get her out, no trouble, no problem.” He suddenly grabbed Wilma at the nape of the neck and the waist, forcing her down even as he pushed her into the space under the stairs.
“What are you doing?” she screamed querulously. “What are you doing, Henry?”
“What I should have done a long time ago,” Henry said, laughing.
“Get under there, Wilma. Just tell it to call you Billie, you bitch.”
She tried to turn, tried to fight him. One hand clawed for his wrist –
he saw her spade-shaped nails slice down, but they clawed only air.
“Stop it, Henry!” She cried. “Stop it right now! Stop this foolishness! I –
I’ll scream!”
“Scream all you want!” he bellowed, still laughing. He raised one foot, planted it in the center of her narrow and joyless backside, and pushed.
“I’ll help you, Wilma! Come on out! Wake up, whatever you are! Wake up! Here’s your dinner! Poison meat! Wake up! Wake up!”
Wilma screamed piercingly, an inarticulate sound that was still more rage than fear.
And then Henry heard it.
First a low whistle, the sound a man might make while working alone without even being aware of it. Then it rose in pitch, sliding up the scale to an earsplitting whine that was barely audible. Then it suddenly descended again and became a growl…and then a hoarse yammering. It was an utterly savage sound.
All his married life Henry Northrup had gone in fear of his wife, but the thing in the crate made Wilma sound like a child doing a kindergarten tantrum. Henry had time to think: Holy God, maybe it really is a Tasmanian devil…it’s some kind of devil, anyway.
Wilma began to scream again, but this time it was a sweeter tune–at least to the ear of Henry Northrup. It was a sound of utter terror. Her yellow blouse flashed in the dark under the stairs, a vague beacon. She lunged at the opening and Henry pushed her back, using all his strength.
” Henry! ” She howled. ” Henreeeee! ”
She came again, head first this time, like a charging bull. Henry caught her head in both hands, feeling the tight, wiry cap of her curls squash under his palms. He pushed. And then, over Wilma’s shoulder, he saw something that might have been the gold-glinting eyes of a small 90
owl. Eyes that were infinitely cold and hateful. The yammering became louder, reaching a crescendo. And when it struck at Wilma, the vibration running through her body was enough to knock him backwards.
He caught one glimpse of her face, her bulging eyes, and then she was dragged back into the darkness. She screamed once more. Only once.
“Just tell it to call you Billie,” he whispered.
Henry Northrup drew a great, shuddering breath.
“It went on…for quite a while,” he said. After a long time, maybe twenty minutes, the growling and the…the sounds of its feeding…that stopped, too. And it started to whistle. Just like you said, Dex. As if it were a happy teakettle or something. It whistled for maybe five minutes, and then it stopped. I shone my light underneath again. The crate had been pulled out a little way. There was…fresh blood. And Wilma’s purse had spilled everywhere. But it got both of her shoes. That was something, wasn’t it?”
Dex didn’t answer. The room basked in sunshine. Outside, a bird sang.
“I finished cleaning the lab,” Henry resumed at last. “It took me another forty minutes, and I almost missed a drop of blood that was on the light globe…saw it just as I was going out. But when I was done, the place was as neat as a pin. Then I went out to my car and drove across campus to the English department. It was getting late, but I didn’t feel a bit tired. In fact, Dex, I don’t think I ever felt more clear-headed in my life. There was a crate in the basement of the English department. I flashed on that very early in your story. Associating one monster with another, I suppose.”
“What do you mean?”
“Last year when Badlinger was in England – you remember Badlinger, don’t you?”
Dex nodded. Badlinger was the man who had beaten Henry out for the English department chair… partly because Badlinger’s wife was bright, vivacious and sociable, while Henry’s wife was a shrew. Had been a shrew.
“He was in England on sabbatical,” Henry said. “Had all their things crated and shipped back. One of them was a giant stuffed animal.
Nessie, they call it. For his kids. That bastard bought it for his kids. I always wanted children, you know. Wilma didn’t. She said kids get in the way.
“Anyway, it came back in this gigantic wooden crate, and Badlinger dragged it down to the English department basement because there was no room in the garage at home, he said, but he didn’t want to throw it out because it might come in handy someday. Meantime, our janitors were using it as a gigantic sort of wastebasket. When it was full of trash, 91
they’d dump it into the back of the truck on trash day and then fill it up again.
“I think it was the crate Badlinger’s damned stuffed monster came back from England in that put the idea in my head. I began to see how your Tasmanian devil could be gotten rid of. And that started me thinking about something else I wanted to be rid of. That I wanted so badly to be rid of.
“I had my keys, of course. I let myself in and went downstairs. The crate was there. It was a big, unwieldy thing, but the janitors’ dolly was down there as well. I dumped out the little bit of trash that was in it and got the crate onto the dolly by standing it on end. I pulled it upstairs and wheeled it straight across the mall and back to Amberson.”