Skeleton Crew

"Clack! Another platen popped up. I saw it this time—the key was in the third row from the top, on the left.

"I got down on my knees very slowly, and then all the muscles in my legs seemed to go slack and I halfswooned the rest of the way down until 1 was sitting there in front of the typewriter with my dirty London Fog topcoat spread around me like the skirt of a girl who has made her very deepest curtsy. The typewriter clacked twice more, fast, paused, then clacked again. Each clack made the same kind of flat echo my footfalls had made on the floor.

"The wallpaper had been rolled into the machine so that the side with the dried glue on it was facing out.

The letters were ripply and bumpy, but I could read them: rackn, it said. Then it clacked again and the word was rackne.

"Then—" He cleared his throat and grinned a little. "Even all these years later this is hard to tell... to just say right out. Okay. The simple fact, with no icing on it, is this. I saw a hand come out of the typewriter. An incredibly tiny hand. It came out from between the keys B and N in the bottom row, curled itself into a fist, and hammered down on the space bar. The machine jumped a space—very fast, like a hiccough—and the hand drew back down inside." The agent's wife giggled shrilly.

"Can it, Marsha," the agent said softly, and she did.

"The clacks began to come a little faster," the editor went on, "and after a while I fancied I could hear the creature that was shoving the key arms up gasping, the way anyone will gasp when he is working hard, coming closer and closer to his physical limit. After a while the machine was hardly printing at all, and most of the keys were filled with that old gluey stuff, but I could read the impressions. It got out rackne is d and then the y key stuck to the glue. I looked at it for a moment and then I reached out one finger and freed it. I don't know if it—Bellis—could have freed it himself. I think not. But I didn't want to see it... him... try. Just the fist was enough to have me tottering on the brink. If I saw the elf entire, so to speak, I think I really would have gone crazy. And there was no question of getting up to run. All the strength had gone out of my legs.

"Clack-clack-clack, those tiny grunts and sobs of effort, and after every word that pallid ink- and dirtstreaked fist would come out between the B and the N and hammer down on the space bar. I don't know exactly how long it went on. Seven minutes, maybe. Maybe ten. Or maybe forever.

"Finally the clacks stopped, and I realized I couldn't hear him breathing anymore. Maybe he fainted...

maybe he just gave up and went away... or maybe he died. Had a heart attack or something. All I really know for sure is that the message was not finished. It read, completely in lowercase: rackne is dying its the little boy jimmy thorpe doesn't know tell thorpe rackne is dying the little boy jimmy is killing rackne bel... and that was all.

"I found the strength to get to my feet then, and I left the room. I walked in great big tippy-toe steps, as if I thought it had gone to sleep and if I made any of those flat echoey noises on the bare wood it would wake up and the typing would start again... and I thought if it did, the first clack would start me screaming. And then I would just go on until my heart or my head burst.

"My Chevy was in the parking lot down the street, all gassed and loaded and ready to go. I got in behind the wheel and remembered the bottle in my topcoat pocket. My hands were shaking so badly that I dropped it, but it landed on the seat and didn't break.