Creeps by Night: Chills and Thrills

Muriel’s manner seemed a bit constrained. She had looked at him strangely, he thought. Pooh! All fancy. It shows how one’s conscience can run away with you. Oh, my God, here they were, in the dark little hall, only a few yards, only a door away from it! He almost ran down the passage to the bedroom, stumbling in at the door and shedding his parcels on the bed in a heap. He kept his back turned on Muriel, for the lower part of his face seemed to have become all loose and uncontrolled. Muriel put down her bag, took off her hat, leaned forward to scrutinize her face in the dressing table mirror; then went out of the room, without speaking.

Sick and shaking, he caught hold of the bedpost and held on. She went along the passage. She was outside the living-room door. No — she had gone into the bathroom. He brushed his forehead and tried vainly to moisten his lips. This was awful, awful, awful, his mind kept saying. It... ah. She had come out again. He heard her turn the handle of the living-room door, switch on the light... Shutting his eyes, he nerved himself for her scream.

It did not come. He could hear her moving about in the room. He... she... oh, God, this was past all bearing, worse than any outcry. Something told him that his eyes were staring in his head; he ducked, not daring to look in the glass, and ran out into the passage, falling, lurching, swaying, with hands outstretched against the cold walls; tottered to the open door of light; grasped the doorpost, the knuckles sticking out white from the back of his hand, and, with a rending, terrible effort, pulled himself into the room and looked on the floor in front of the fireplace.

There was no body. Nothing at all.

“Ah — ha — ha-ha!” A little shrill whimpering laugh sounded in the room, and he realized that it had come from his own throat. Frantically he raised his eyes. Muriel was staring at him in amazement and distaste.

“Whatever is the matter with you, Maurice!” she exclaimed.

“The matter?”

“Yes.” She came a step nearer. “You’ve been behaving in the queerest way, all the afternoon.” She gave a half laugh, looking closely into his eyes. “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

“Queer? I — why, what’s been the matter with me?” He got the words out, but all the time his mind was trying to cope with the staggering thing she had just said. All the afternoon. Queer all the afternoon. That’s what she had said.

Muriel laughed again. It was her way of turning aside her irritation. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you,” she answered. “All I know is that you’ve been behaving very queerly all the afternoon. They were all wondering what was the matter with you. I could see they were.”

His mouth fell open. “They — who were?”

“Why, at the Chadwickes’, of course. You wouldn’t say a word to a soul, except once, when you were quite unnecessarily rude to old General McKie.”

“At the Chadwickes’!” he shouted. “You don’t know what you’re saying! At the Chadwickes’?”

“Why, Maurice, whatever is the matter with you! Of course you were at — oh, my darling! Maurice! My darling boy!”

For he had begun to laugh — soundlessly at first, a horrible, silent shaking; and then he was screaming, sobbing, laughing, calling out...

V

How soon afterward he did not know, he found himself on his knees, holding on tight to her, his head in her lap; and she was stroking his hair, soothing him, comforting him as if he were a tiny child. “There, there, my darling, Maurice, my darling, it will be all right. There’s nothing to be frightened of. Nothing. Nothing. There, darling, there.”

And presently he was calmer; quite quiet. He knelt, his arms around her, looking over toward the bookcase with wide eyes, realizing the truth. The breakdown — what he had been afraid of — it had come. This was it; all this. Everything. He had spent the afternoon unconsciously, an automaton, while his consciousness had been busy... here. The whole story — the precautions, the details, the vivid enactment — he could see it all now, the fantastic, pettifogging logic of the disordered mind. And the imagination — what he had done to Vera. Good God, if that was delusion, what was there to hold onto in life?

Steady — that was the way to go off again. He held on tight to Muriel for a minute; then, calmer, he took another look at the floor, grimacing oddly.

“Do you know,” he blurted, “I thought I’d—” And then he broke off short. He’d have enough troubles without that. Least said, eh?

With gradually narrowing eyes, he listened to all the soothing things Muriel was saying over the top of his head. She’d been noticing how tired he was getting, how overdone. He needed a change. A nice rest, and a change. They’d go off together, down to the sea—

“That knife,” he exclaimed suddenly, looking up at her. “I haven’t had that for years. I remember now. I gave it away, years ago.”