The Witching Hour Read online

  The music returned. Matt danced on with leaden legs. He could not stop. He would never stop. He thought of the fairy tale about the red shoes. Abbie seemed as fresh and determined as ever.

  As the jukebox came into sight again, Matt noticed some commotion around it. The bartender was approaching the manager with an axe, a glittering fee axe. For one whirling moment, Matt thought the whole world had gone mad. Then he saw the manager take the axe and approach the jukebox cautiously, the axe poised in one hand ready to strike.

  He brought it down smartly. The cord squirmed its coils out of the way. The manager wrenched the axe from the floor. Bravely he advanced closer. He looked down and screamed. The cord had a loop around one leg; the loop was tightening. Frantically the manager swung again and again. One stroke hit the cord squarely. It parted. The music stopped. The box went dark. The headless cord squirmed in dying agonies.

  Abbie stopped dancing. Matt stood still, his legs trembling, sighing with relief.

  “Let’s go, Abbie,” he pleaded. “Let’s go quick.”

  She shook her head. “Let’s sit.” She led him to a table which, like the rest of the room, had been suddenly vacated of patrons. “I reckon you’d like a drink.”

  “I’d rather leave,” Matt muttered.

  They sat down. Imperiously Abbie beckoned at the waiter. He came toward the table cautiously. Abbie looked inquiringly at Matt.

  “Scotch,” Matt said helplessly. “Straight.”

  In a moment the waiter was back with a bottle and two glasses on a tray. “The boss said to get the money first,” he said timidly.

  Matt searched his pockets futilely. He looked at the manager, standing against one wall, glowering, his arms folded across his chest. “I haven’t any money on me,” Matt said.

  “That’s all right,” Abbie said. “Just set the things down.”

  “No, ma’am,” the waiter began, and his eyes rolled as the tray floated out of his hand and settled to the table. He stopped talking, shut his mouth and backed away.

  Abbie was brooding, her chin in one small hand. “I ain’t been a good daughter,” she said. “Paw would like it here.”

  “No, no,” Matt said. “Don’t do that. We’ve got enough trouble — ”

  Jenkins was sitting in the third chair, blinking slowly, reeking of alcohol. Hastily Matt reached for the bottle and sloshed some into a glass. He raised it to his lips and tossed it off. The liquor burned his throat for a moment and then was gone. Matt waited expectantly as he lowered the glass to the table. He felt nothing, nothing at all. He looked suspiciously at the glass. It was still full.

  Jenkins focused his eyes. “Ab!” he said. He seemed to cringe in his chair. “What you doin’ here? You look different. All fixed up. Find a feller with money?”

  Abbie ignored his questions. “If I ask you to do somethin’, Paw, would you do it?”

  “Sure, Ab,” Jenkins said. His eyes lit on the bottle of bourbon. “Anything.” He raised the bottle to his lips. It gurgled pleasantly and went on gurgling.

  Matt watched the level of amber liquid drop in the bottle, but when Jenkins put it down and wiped his bearded lips with one large, hairy hand, the bottle was half-empty and stayed that way. Jenkins sighed heavily. Matt raised his glass again and tilted it to his lips. When he lowered it, the glass was still full and Matt was still empty. He stared moodily at the glass.

  “If I asked you to hit Mr. Wright in the nose,” Abbie went on, “I reckon you’d do it?”

  Matt tensed himself.

  “Sure, Ab, sure,” Jenkins said. He turned his massive head slowly. He doubled his fist. The expression behind the beard was unreadable. Matt decided it was better that way. “Ain’t you been treatin’ mah little gal right?” Jenkins demanded. “Say, son,” he said with concern, “you don’t look so good.” He looked back at Abbie. “Want I should hit him?”

  “Not now,” Abbie said. “But keep it in mind.”

  Matt relaxed and seized the opportunity to dash the glass to his mouth. Futilely. Not a drop of liquor reached his stomach. Hopelessly Matt thought of Tantalus.

  “Police!” Jenkins bellowed suddenly, rising up with the neck of the bottle in one huge hand.

  Matt looked. The bartender was leading three policemen into the front of the room. The officers advanced stolidly, confident of their ultimate strength and authority. Matt turned quickly to Abbie.

  “No tricks,” he pleaded. “Not with the law.”

  Abbie yawned. “I’m tired. I reckon it’s almost midnight.”

  Jenkins charged, bull-like, bellowing with rage. And the room vanished.

  Matt blinked, sickened. They were back in the cabin, Abbie and he. “What about your father?” Matt asked.

  “Next to liquor,” Abbie said, “Paw likes a fight best. I’m going to bed now. I’m real tired.”

  She left her shoes on the floor, climbed into her bunk, and pulled the blanket around it.

  Matt walked slowly to his bunk. Mary had a little lamb. He sat down on it and pulled off his shoes, letting them thump to the floor. With fleece as white as snow. He pulled the blanket around his bunk and made rustling sounds, but he lay down without removing his clothes. And everywhere that Mary went. He lay stiffly, listening to the immediate sounds of deep breathing coming from the other bunk. The lamb was sure to go…

  Two tortured hours crawled by. Matt sat up cautiously. He picked up his shoes from the floor. He straightened. Slowly he tiptoed toward the door. Inch by inch, listening to Abbie’s steady breathing, until he was at the door. He slipped it open, only a foot. He squeezed through and drew it shut behind him.

  A porch board creaked. Matt froze. He waited. There was no sound from inside. He crept over the pebbles of the driveway, suppressing exclamations of pain. But he did not dare stop to put on his shoes.

  He was beside the car. He eased the door open and slipped into the seat. Blessing the steep driveway, he released the brake and pushed in the clutch. The car began to roll. Slowly at first, then picking up speed, the car turned out of the driveway into the road.

  Ghostlike in the brilliant moon, it sped silently down the long hill. After one harrowing, tree-darkened turn, Matt switched on the lights and gently clicked the door to its first catch.

  When he was a mile away, he started the motor.

  Escape!

  Matt pulled up to the gas pump in the gray dawn that was already sticky with heat. Through the dusty, bug-splattered windshield the bloodshot sun peered at him and saw a dark young man in stained work clothes, his cheeks and chin stubbled black, his eyes burning wearily. But Matt breathed deep; he drew in the wine of freedom.

  Was this Fair Play or Humansville? Matt was too tired and too hungry to remember. Whichever it was, all was well.

  It seemed a reasonable assumption that Abbie could not find him if she did not know where he was, that she could not teleport herself anywhere she had not already been. When she had disappeared the first time, she had gone to the places in Springfield she knew. She had brought her father from his two-room shanty. She had taken Matt back to the cabin.

  The sleepy attendant approached, and with him came a wash of apprehension to knot his stomach. Money! He had no money. Hopelessly he began to search his pockets. Without money he was stuck here, and all his money was back in his cabin with his clothes and his typewriter and his manila folder of notes.

  And then his hand touched something in his hip pocket. Wonderingly he pulled it out. It was his billfold. He peered at its contents. Four dollars in bills and three hundred in traveler’s checks. “Fill it up,” he said.

  When had he picked up the billfold? Or had he had it all the time? He could have sworn that he had not had it when he was in the cocktail lounge in Springfield. He was almost sure that he had left it in his suit pants. The uncertainty made him uneasy. Or was it only hunger? He hadn’t eaten since toying with Abbie’s stolen delicacies yesterday afternoon.

  “Where’s a good place to eat?” he asked as the atte
ndant handed him change.

  It was an old fellow in coveralls. He pointed a few hundred feet up the road. “See those trucks parked outside that diner?” Matt nodded. “Usual thing, when you see them outside, you can depend on good food inside. Here it don’t mean a thing. Food’s lousy. We got a landmark though. Truckers stop to see it.” The old fellow cackled. “Name’s Lola.”

  As Matt pulled away, the old man called after him. “Don’t make no difference, anyway. No place else open.”

  Matt parked beside one of the large trailer trucks. Lola? He made a wry face as he got out of the car. He was through with women.

  The diner, built in the shape of a railroad car, had a long counter running along one side, but it was filled with truckers in shirt sleeves, big men drinking coffee and smoking and teasing the waitress. Tiredly Matt slipped into one of the empty booths.

  The waitress detached herself from her admirers reluctantly and came to the booth with a glass of water in one hand, swinging her hips confidently. She had a smoldering, dark beauty, and she was well aware of it. Her black hair was cut short, and her brown eyes and tanned face were smiling. Her skirt and low-cut peasant blouse bulged generously in the right places. Sometime — and not too many years in the future — she would bulge too much, but right now she was lush, ready to be picked by the right hand. Matt guessed that she would not be a waitress in a small town long. As she put the water on the table, she bent low to demonstrate just how lush she was.

  “What’ll you have?” the waitress said softly.

  Matt swallowed. “A couple of — hotcakes,” he said, “with sausages.”

  She straightened up slowly, smiling brightly at him. “Stack a pair,” she yelled, “with links.” She turned around and looked enticingly over her shoulder. “Coffee?”

  Matt nodded. He smiled a little to show that he appreciated her attentions. There was no doubt about the fact that she was an attractive girl. In anyone’s mind. Any other time …

  “Ouch!” she said suddenly and jerked. She rubbed her rounded bottom vigorously and cast Matt a hurt, reproachful glance. Slowly her pained expression changed to a roguish smile. She waggled a finger at Matt. “Naughty, naughty!” the finger said. Matt stared at her as if she had lost her senses. He shook his head in bewilderment as she vanished behind the counter. And then he noticed that a couple of the truckers had turned around to glower at him, and Matt became absorbed in contemplating the glass of water.

  It made him realize how thirsty he was. He drank the whole glassful, but it didn’t seem to help much. He was just as thirsty, just as empty.

  Before he put down the glass Lola was back with his cup of coffee. She carried it casually and efficiently in one hand, not spilling a drop into the saucer. But as she neared Matt, the inexplicable happened. She tripped over something invisible on the smooth floor. She stumbled. The coffee flew in a steaming arc and splashed on Matt’s shirt as if it had been thrown deliberately.

  Lola gasped, her hand to her mouth. Matt leaped up, pulling his shirt away from his chest, swearing. Lola grabbed a handful of paper napkins and began to dab at his shirt.

  “Golly, honey, I’m sorry,” she said warmly. “I can’t understand how I came to trip.”

  She pressed herself close to him. Matt could smell the odor of gardenias.

  “That’s all right,” he said, drawing back. “It was an accident. It’s beginning to cool already.”

  She followed him, working at his shirt. Matt noticed the truckers all watching, some darkly, the rest enviously. He slipped back into the booth.

  One of the truckers guffawed. “You don’t have to spill coffee on me, Lola, to make me steam,” he said. The rest of the truckers laughed with him.

  “Oh, shut up!” Lola told them. She turned back to Matt. “You all right, honey?”

  “Sure, sure,” Matt said wearily. “Just bring me the hotcakes.” The coffee had cooled now. His shirt felt clammy. Matt thought about accident prones. It had to be an accident. He glanced uneasily around the diner. The only girl here was Lola.

  The hotcakes were ready. She was bringing them toward the booth, but it was not a simple process. Matt had never seen slippery hotcakes before, but these were definitely slippery. Lola was so busy that she forgot to swing her hips.

  The hotcakes slithered from side to side on the plate. Lola juggled them, tilting the plate back and forth to keep them from sliding off. Her eyes were wide with astonishment; her mouth was a round, red O; her forehead was furrowed with concentration. She did an intricate, unconscious dance step to keep from losing the top hotcake.

  As Matt watched, fascinated, the sausages, four of them linked together, started to slip from the plate. With something approaching sentience, they skidded off and disappeared down the low neck of Lola’s blouse.

  Lola shrieked. She started to wriggle, her shoulders hunched. While she tried to balance the hotcakes with one hand, the other dived into the blouse and hunted around frantically. Matt watched; the truckers watched. Lola hunted and wiggled. The hand that held the plate flew up. The hotcakes scattered.

  One hit the nearest trucker in the face. He peeled it off, red and bellowing. “Who’s the joker?” He dived off the stool toward Matt.

  Matt tried to get up, but the table caught him in the stomach. He climbed up on the seat. The hotcake the trucker had discarded landed on the head of the man next to him. He stood up angrily.

  Lola finally located the elusive sausages. She drew them out of their intimate hiding place with a shout of triumph. They whipped into the open mouth of the lunging trucker. He stopped, transfixed, strangling.

  “Argh-gh-uggle!” he said.

  A cup crashed against the wall close to Matt’s head. Matt ducked. If he could get over the back of this booth, he could reach the door. The place was filled with angry shouts and angrier faces and bulky shoulders approaching. Lola took one frightened look and grabbed Matt around the knees.

  “Protect me!” she said wildly.

  The air was filled with missiles. Matt reached down to disengage Lola’s fear-strengthened arms. He glanced up to see the trucker spitting out the last of the sausages. With a maddened yell, the trucker threw a heavy fist at Matt. Hampered as he was, Matt threw himself back hopelessly. Something ripped. The fist breezed past and crashed through a window.

  Matt hung over the back of the booth, head downward, unable to get back up, unable to shake Lola loose. Everywhere he looked he could see raging faces. He closed his eyes in surrender.

  From somewhere, above the tumult, came the sound of laughter, like the tinkling of little silver bells.

  Then Matt was outside with no idea of how he had got there. In his hand was a strip of thin fabric. Lola’s blouse. Poor Lola, he thought, as he threw it away. What was his fatal fascination for girls?

  Behind him the diner was alive with lights and the crash of dishes and the smacking of fists on flesh. Before long they would discover that he was gone.

  Matt ran to his car. It started to life when he punched the button. He backed it up, screeched it to a stop, jerked into first and barreled onto the highway. Within twenty seconds he was doing sixty.

  He turned to look back at the diner and almost lost control of the car as he tried to absorb the implications of the contents of the back seat.

  Resting neatly there were his typewriter, his notes and all his clothes.

  When Matt pulled to a stop on the streets of Clinton, he was feeling easier mentally and much worse physically. The dip in a secluded stream near the road, the change of clothes, and the shave — torturing in the cold water — had refreshed him for a while. But that had worn off, and the lack of a night’s sleep and twenty-four hours without food were catching up with him.

  Better that, he thought grimly, than Abbie. He could endure anything for a time.

  As for the typewriter and the notes and the clothes, there was probably some simple explanation. The one Matt liked best was that Abbie had had a change of heart; she had expected
him to leave and she had made his way easy. She was, Matt thought, a kindhearted child underneath everything.

  The trouble with that explanation was that Matt didn’t believe it.

  He shrugged. There were more pressing things — money, for instance. Gas was getting low, and he needed to get something in his stomach if he was to keep up his strength for the long drive ahead. He had to cash one of his checks. That seemed simple enough. The bank was at the corner of this block. It was eleven o’clock. The bank would be open. They would cash a check.

  But for some reason Matt felt uneasy.

  Matt walked into the bank and went directly to a window. He countersigned one of the checks and presented it to the teller, a thin little man with a wispy mustache and a bald spot on top of his head. The teller compared the signatures and turned to the shelf at his side where bills stood in piles, some still wrapped. He counted out four twenties, a ten, a five and five ones.

  “Here you are, sir,” he said politely.

  Matt accepted it only because his hand was outstretched and the teller put the money in it. His eyes were fixed in horror upon a wrapped bundle of twenty-dollar bills which was slowly rising from the shelf. It climbed leisurely over the top of the cage.

  “What’s the matter, sir?” the teller asked in alarm. “Do you feel sick?”

  Matt nodded once and then tore his eyes away and shook his head vigorously. “No,” he gasped. “I’m all right.” He took a step back from the window.

  “Are you sure? You don’t look well at all.”

  With a shrinking sensation, Matt felt something fumble its way into his right-hand coat pocket. He plunged his hand in after it. His empty stomach revolved in his abdomen. He could not mistake the touch of crisp paper. He stooped quickly beneath the teller’s window. The teller leaned out. Matt straightened up, the package of bills in his hand.

  “I guess you must have dropped this,” he muttered.

  The teller glanced at the shelf and back at the sheaf of twenties. “I don’t see how — but thank you! That’s the funniest — ”