“That janitor gives me the creeps,” Ruth said when she came in that afternoon.
I looked up from the typewriter as she put the bags on the table and faced me. I was killing a second draft on a story.
“He gives you the creeps,” I said.
“Yes, he does,” she said. “That way he has of slinking around. He’s like Peter Lorre or somebody.”
“Peter Lorre,” I said. I was still plotting.
“Babe,” she implored. “I’m serious. The man is a creep.”
I snapped out of the creative fog with a blink.
“Hon, what can the poor guy do about his face?” I said. “Heredity. Give him a break.”
She plopped down in a chair by the table and started to take out groceries, stacking cans on the table.
“Listen,” she said.
I could smell it coming. That dead serious tone of hers which she isn’t even aware of anymore. But which comes every time she’s about to make one of her “revelations” to me.
“Listen,” she repeated. Dramatic emphasis.
“Yes, dear,” I said. I leaned one elbow on the typewriter cover and gazed at her patiently.
“You get that look off your face,” she said. “You always look at me as if I were an idiot child or something.”
I smiled. Wanly.
“You’ll be sorry,” she said. “Some night when that man creeps in with an axe and dismembers us.”
“He’s just a poor man earning a living,” I said. “He mops the halls, he stokes the furnaces, he . . .”
“We have oil heat,” she said.
“If we had a furnace, the man would stoke it,” I said. “Let us have charity. He labors like ourselves. I write stories. He mops floors. Who can say which is the greater act?”
She looked dejected.
“Okay,” she said with a surrendering gesture. “Okay, if you don’t want to face facts.”
“Which are?” I prodded. I decided it was best to let it out of her before it burned a hole in her mind.
Her eyes narrowed. “You listen to me,” she said. “That man has some design in being here. He’s no janitor. I wouldn’t be surprised if . . .”
“If this apartment house were just a front for a gambling establishment. A hideout for public enemies one through fifteen. An abortion mill. A counterfeiter’s lair. A murderer’s rendezvous.”
She was already in the kitchen thumping cans and boxes into the cupboard.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” In that patient if-you-get-murdered-then-don’t-come-to-me-for-sympathy voice. “Don’t say I didn’t try. If I’m married to a wall, I can’t help it.”
I came in and slid my arms around her waist. I kissed her neck.
“Stop that,” she said. “You can’t disconcert me. The janitor is . . .”
She turned. “You’re serious,” I said.
Her face darkened. “Honey, I am,” she said. “The man looks at me in a funny way.”
“How?”
“Oh,” she searched. “In . . . in . . . anticipation.”
I chuckled. “Can’t blame the man.”
“Be serious now.”
“Remember the time you thought the milkman was a knife killer for the Mafia?” I said.
“I don’t care.”
“You read too many fantasy pulps,” I said.
“You’ll be sorry.”
I kissed her neck again. “Let’s eat,” I said.
She groaned. “Why do I tell you anything?”
“Because you love me,” I said.
She closed her eyes. “I give up,” she said quietly, with the patience of a saint under fire.
I kissed her. “Come on, hon, we have enough troubles.”
She shrugged. “Oh, all right.”
“Good,” I said. “When are Phil and Marge coming?”
“Six,” she said. “I got pork.”
“Roast?”
“Mmmmm.”
“I’ll buy that.”
“You already did.”
“In that case, back to the typewriter.”
While I squeezed out another page I heard her muttering to herself in the kitchen. I didn’t catch it all. All that came through was a grimly prophetic, “Murdered in our beds or something.”
—
“No, it’s flukey,” Ruth analyzed as we all sat having dinner that night.
I grinned at Phil and he grinned back.
“I think so too,” Marge agreed. “Whoever heard of charging only sixty-five a month for a five-room apartment furnished? Stove, refrigerator, washer—it’s fantastic.”
“Girls,” I said. “Let’s not quibble. Let’s take advantage.”
“Oh!” Ruth tossed her pretty blonde head. “If a man said—Here’s a million dollars for you, old man—you’d probably take it.”
“I most definitely would take it,” I said. “I would then run like hell.”
“You’re naïve,” she said. “You think people are . . . are . . .”
“Steady,” I said.
“You think everybody is Santa Claus!”
“It is a little funny,” Phil said. “Think about it, Rick.”
I thought about it. A five-room apartment, brand new, furnished in the best manner, dishes . . . I pursed my lips. A guy can get lost in his typewriter. Maybe it was true. I nodded anyways. I could see their point. Of course I wouldn’t say so. And spoil Ruth’s and my little game of war? Never.
“I think they charge too much,” I said.
“Oh . . . Lord!” Ruth was taking it straight, as she usually did. “Too much! Five rooms yet! Furniture, dishes, linens, a . . . a television set! What do you want—a swimming pool!”
“A small one?” I said meekly.
She looked at Marge and Phil.
“Let us discuss this thing quietly,” she said. “Let us pretend that the fourth voice we hear is nothing but the wind in the eaves.”
“I am the wind in the eaves,” I said.
“Listen,” Ruth re-spun her forbodings, “what if the place is a fluke? I mean what if they just want people here for a cover-up. That would explain the rent. You remember the rush on the place when they started renting?”
I remembered as well as Phil and Marge. The only reason we’d got our apartment was because we happened to be walking past the place when the janitor first put out the renting sign. We went right in. I remember our amazement, our delight, at the rental. We thought it was Christmas.
We were the first tenants. The next day was like the Alamo under attack. It’s a little hard to get an apartment these days.
“I say there’s something funny about it,” Ruth finished. “And did you ever notice that janitor?”
“He’s a creep,” I contributed blandly.
“He is,” Marge laughed. “My God, he’s something out of a B-picture. Those eyes. He looks like Peter Lorre.”
“See!” Ruth was triumphant.
“Kids,” I said, raising a hand of weary conciliation, “if there’s something foul going on behind our backs, let’s allow it to go on. We aren’t being asked to contribute or suffer by it. We are living in a nice spot for a nice rent. What are we going to do—look into it and try to spoil it?”
“What if there are designs on us?” Ruth said.
“What designs, hon?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I sense something.”
“Remember the time you sensed the bathroom was haunted?” I said. “It was a mouse.”
She started clearing off the dishes. “Are you married to a blind man too?” she asked Marge.
“Men are all blind,” Marge said, accompanying my poor man’s seer into the kitchen. “We must face it.”
Phil and I lit cigarettes.
“No kidding now,” I said, so the girls wouldn’t hear. “Do you think there’s anything wrong?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, Rick,” he said. “I will say this—it’s pretty strange to rent a furnished place for so little.”
“Yeah,” I said. Yeah, I thought—awake at last.
Strange it is.
—
I stopped for a chat with our strolling cop the next morning. Johnson walks around the neighborhood. There are gangs in the neighborhood, he told me, traffic is heavy and the kids need watching especially after three in the afternoon.
He’s a good Joe, lots of fun. I chat with him everyday when I go out for anything.
“My wife suspects foul doings in our apartment house,” I told him.
“This is my suspicion too,” Johnson said, dead sober. “It is my unwilling conclusion that, within those walls, six-year-olds are being forced to weave baskets by candle light.”
“Under the whip hand of a gaunt old hag,” I added.
He nodded sadly. Then he looked around, plotter-like.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” he said. “I want to crack the case all by myself.”
I patted his shoulder. “Johnson,” I said. “Your secret is locked behind these iron lips.”
“I am grateful,” he said.
We laughed.
“How’s the missus?” he asked.
“Suspicious,” I said. “Curious. Investigating.”
“Much the same,” he said. “Everything normal.”
“Right,” I said. “I think I’ll stop letting her read those science-fiction magazines.”
“What is it she suspects?” he asked.
“Oh,” I grinned. “Just suppositions. She thinks the rent is too cheap. Everybody around here pays twenty to fifty dollars more, she says.”
“Is that right?” Johnson said.
“Yeah,” I said, punching his arm. “Don’t you tell anybody. I don’t want to lose a good deal.”
Then I went to the store.
—
“I knew it,” Ruth said. “I knew it.”
She gazed intently at me over a dishpan of soggy clothes.
“You knew what, hon?” I said, putting down the package of second sheets I’d gone down the street to buy.
“This place is a fluke,” she said. She raised her hand. “Don’t say a word,” she said. “You just listen to me.”
I sat down. I waited. “Yes dear,” I said.
“I found engines in the basement,” she said.
“What kind of engines, dear? Fire engines?”
Her lips tightened. “Come on, now,” she said, getting a little burned. “I saw the things.”
She meant it.
“I’ve been down there too, hon,” I said. “How come I never saw any engines?”
She looked around. I didn’t like the way she did it. She looked as if she really thought someone might be lurking at the window, listening.
“This is under the basement,” she said.
I looked dubious.
She stood up. “Damn it! You come on and I’ll show you.”
She held my hand as we went through the hall and into the elevator. She stood grimly by me as we descended, my hand tight in her grip.
“When did you see them?” I asked, trying to be nice.
“When I was washing in the laundry room down there,” she said. “In the hallways, I mean, when I was bringing the clothes back. I was coming to the elevator and I saw a doorway. It was a little bit open.”
“Did you go in?” I asked.
She looked at me. “You went in,” I said.
“I went down the steps and it was light and . . .”
“And you saw engines.”
“I saw engines.”
“Big ones?”
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. We went out.
“I’ll show you how big,” she said.
It was a blank wall. “It’s here,” she said.
I looked at her. I tapped the wall. “Honey,” I said.
“Don’t you dare say it!” she snapped. “Have you ever heard of doors in a wall?”
“Was this door in the wall?”
“The wall probably slides over it,” she said starting to tap. It sounded solid to me. “Darn it!” she said, “I can just hear what you’re going to say.”
I didn’t say it. I just stood there watching her.
“Lose something?”
The janitor’s voice was sort of like Lorre’s, low and insinuating. Ruth gasped, caught way off guard. I jumped myself.
“My wife thinks there’s a—” I started nervously.
“I was showing him the right way to hang a picture,” Ruth interrupted hastily. “That’s the way, babe.” She turned toward me. “You put the nail in at an angle, not straight in. Now, do you understand?” She took my hand.
The janitor smiled.
“See you,” I said awkwardly. I felt his eyes on us as we walked back to the elevator.
When the doors shut, Ruth turned quickly.
“Good night!” she stormed. “What are you trying to do, get him on us?”
“Honey. What . . . ?” I was flabbergasted.
“Never mind,” she said. “There are engines down there. Huge engines. I saw them. And he knows about them.”
“Baby,” I said. “Why don’t . . .”
“Look at me,” she said quickly.
I looked. Hard.
“Do you think I’m crazy?” she asked. “Come on, now. Never mind the hesitation.”
I sighed. “I think you’re imaginative,” I said. “You read those . . .”
“Uh!” she muttered. She looked disgusted. “You’re as bad as . . .”
“You and Galileo,” I said.
“I’ll show you those things,” she said. “We’re going down there again tonight when that janitor is asleep. If he’s ever asleep.”
I got worried then.
“Honey, cut it out,” I said. “You’ll get me going too.”
“Good,” she said. “Good. I thought it would take a hurricane.”
I sat staring at my typewriter all afternoon, nothing coming out.
But concern.
I didn’t get it. Was she actually serious? All right, I thought, I’ll take it straight. She saw a door that was left open. Accidentally. That was obvious. If there were really huge engines under the apartment house as she said, then the people who built them darn sure wouldn’t want anyone to know about them.
East 7th Street. An apartment house. And huge engines underneath it.
True?
—
“The janitor has three eyes!”
She was shaking. Her face was white. She stared at me like a kid who’d read her first horror story.
“Honey,” I said. I put my arms around her. She was scared. I felt sort of scared myself. And not that the janitor had an extra eye either.
I didn’t say anything at first. What can you say when your wife comes up with something like that?
She shook a long time. Then she spoke, in a quiet voice, a timid voice.
“I know,” she said. “You don’t believe me.”
I swallowed. “Babe,” I said helplessly.
“We’re going down tonight,” she said. “This is something important now. It’s serious.”
“I don’t think we should . . .” I started.
“I’m going down there,” she said. She sounded edgy now, a little hysterical. “I tell you there are engines down there. Goddamn it, there are engines!”
She started crying now, shaking badly. I patted her head, rested it against my shoulder. “All right, baby,” I said. “All right.”
She tried to tell me through her tears. But it didn’t work. Later when she’d calmed down, I listened. I didn’t want to get her upset. I figured the safest way was just to listen.
“I was walking through the hall downstairs,” she said. “I thought maybe there was some afternoon mail. You know once in a while the mailman will . . .”
She stopped. “Never mind that. What matters is what happened when I walked past the janitor.”
“What?” I said, afraid of what was coming.
“He smiled,” she said. “You know the way he does. Sweet and murderous.”
I let it go. I didn’t argue the point. I still didn’t think the janitor was anything but a harmless guy who had the misfortune to be born with a face that was strictly from Charles Addams.
“So?” I said. “Then what?”
“I walked past him. I felt myself shiver. Because he looked at me as if he knew something about me I didn’t even know. I don’t care what you say—that’s the feeling I got. And then . . .”
She shuddered. I took her hand.
“Then?” I said.
“I felt him looking at me.”
I’d felt that too when he found us in the basement. I knew what she meant. You just knew the guy was looking at you.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll buy that.”
“You won’t buy this,” she said grimly. She sat stiffly a moment, then said, “When I turned around to look he was walking away from me.”
I could feel it on the way. “I don’t . . .” I started weakly.
“His head was turned but he was looking at me.”
I swallowed. I sat there numbly, patting her hand without even knowing I was doing it.
“How, hon?” I heard myself asking.
“There was an eye in the back of his head.”
“Hon,” I said. I looked at her in—let’s face it—fright. A mind on the loose can get awfully confused.
She closed her eyes. She clasped her hands after drawing away the one I was holding. She pressed her lips together. I saw a tear wriggle out from under her left eyelid and roll down her cheek. She was white.
“I saw it,” she said quietly. “So help me God, I saw that eye.”
I don’t know why I went on with it. Self torture, I guess. I really wanted to forget the whole thing, pretend it never even happened.
“Why haven’t we seen it before, Ruth?” I asked. “We’ve seen the back of the man’s head before.”
“Have we?” she said. “Have we?”
“Sweetheart, somebody must have seen it. Do you think there’s never been anyone behind him?”
“His hair parted, Rick,” she said, “and before I ran away I saw the hair going back over it, so you couldn’t see it.”
I sat there silently. What to say now?—I thought. What could a guy possibly say to his wife when she talks to him like that? You’re nuts? You’re loony? Or the old, tired, “You’ve been working too hard.” She hadn’t been working too hard.
Then again maybe she had been working overtime. With her imagination.
“Are you going down with me tonight?” she asked.
“All right,” I said quietly. “All right, sweetheart. Now will you go and lie down?”
“I’m all right.”
“Sweetheart, go and lie down,” I said firmly. “I’ll go with you tonight. But I want you to lie down now.”
She got up. She went into the bedroom and I heard the bedsprings squeak as she sat down, then drew up her legs and fell back on the pillow.
I went in a little later to put a comforter over her. She was looking at the ceiling. I didn’t say anything to her. I don’t think she wanted to talk to me.
—
“What can I do?” I said to Phil.
Ruth was asleep. I’d sneaked across the hall.
“Maybe she saw them?” he said. “Isn’t it possible?”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “And you know what else is possible too.”
“Look, you want to go down and see the janitor. You want to . . .”
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
“You’re going down to the basement with her?”
“If she keeps insisting,” I said. “Otherwise, no.”
“Look,” he said. “When you go, come and get us.”
I looked at him curiously. “You mean the thing is getting to you, too?” I said.
He looked at me in a funny way. I saw his throat move.
“Don’t . . . look, don’t tell anyone,” he said.
He looked around, then turned back.
“Marge told me the same thing,” he said. “She said the janitor has three eyes.”
I went down after supper for some ice cream. Johnson was walking around.
“They’re working you overtime,” I said as he started to walk beside me.
“They expect some trouble from the local gangs,” he said.
“I never saw any gangs,” I said distractedly.
“They’re here,” he said.
“Mmmm.”
“How’s your wife?”
“Fine,” I lied.
“She still think the apartment house is a front?” he laughed.
I swallowed. “No,” I said. “I’ve broken her of that. I think she was just kidding me all the time.”
He nodded and left me at the corner. And for some reason I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking all the way home. I kept looking over my shoulder too.
—
“It’s time,” Ruth said.
I grunted and rolled on my side. She nudged me. I woke up sort of hazy and looked automatically at the clock. The radium numbers told me it was almost four o’clock.
“You want to go now?” I asked, too sleepy to be tactful.
There was a pause. That woke me up.
“I’m going,” she said quietly.
I sat up. I looked at her in the half darkness, my heart starting to do a drum beat too heavily. My mouth and throat felt dry.
“All right,” I said. “Wait till I get dressed.”
She was already dressed. I heard her in the kitchen making some coffee while I put on my clothes. There was no noise. I mean it didn’t sound as if her hands were shaking. She spoke lucidly too. But when I stared into the bathroom mirror I saw a worried husband. I splashed cold water in my face and combed my hair.
“Thanks,” I said as she handed me the cup of coffee. I stood there, nervous before my own wife.
She didn’t drink any coffee. “Are you awake?” she asked. I nodded. I noticed the flashlight and the screwdriver on the kitchen table. I finished the coffee.
“All right,” I said. “Let’s get it over with.”
I felt her hand on my arm.
“I hope you’ll . . .” she started. Then turned her face.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she said. “We’d better go.”
The house was dead quiet as we went into the hall. We were halfway to the elevator when I remembered Phil and Marge. I told her.
“We can’t wait,” she said. “It’ll be light soon.”
“Just wait and see if they’re up,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. She stood by the elevator door while I went down the hall and knocked quietly on the door of their apartment. There was no answer. I glanced up the hall.
She was gone.
I felt my heart lurch. Even though I was sure there was no danger in the basement, it scared me. “Ruth,” I muttered and headed for the stairs.
“Wait a second!” I heard Phil call loudly from his door.
“I can’t!” I called back, charging down.
When I got to the basement I saw the open elevator door and light streaming from the inside. Empty.
I looked around for a light switch but there wasn’t any. I started to move along the dark passage as fast as I could.
“Hon!” I whispered urgently. “Ruth, where are you?”
I found her standing before a doorway in the wall. It was open.
“Now stop acting as if I were insane,” she said coldly.
I gaped and felt a hand pressing against my cheek. It was my own. She was right. There were stairs. And it was lighted down there. I heard sounds. Sounds of metallic clickings and strange buzzings.
I took her hand. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Her hand tightened in mine. “All right,” she said. “Never mind that now. There’s something flukey about all this.”
I nodded. Then I said, “Yeah,” realizing she couldn’t see my nod in the darkness.
“Let’s go down,” she said.
“I don’t think we better,” I said.
“We’ve got to know,” she said as if the entire problem had been assigned to us.
“But there must be someone down there,” I said.
“We’ll just peek,” she said.
She pulled me. And I guess I felt too ashamed of myself to pull back. We started down. Then it came to me. If she was right about the doorway in the walls and the engines, she must be right about the janitor and he must really have . . .
I felt a little detached from reality. East 7th Street, I told myself again. An apartment house on East 7th Street. It’s all real.
I couldn’t quite convince myself.
We stopped at the bottom. And I just stared. Engines, all right. Fantastic engines. And, as I looked at them it came to me what kind of engines they were. I’d read about science too, the non-fiction kind.
I felt dizzy. You can’t adapt quick to something like that. To be plunged from a brick apartment house into this . . . this storehouse of energy. It got me.
I don’t know how long we were there. But suddenly I realized we had to get out of there, report this thing.
“Come on,” I said. We moved up the steps, my mind working like an engine itself. Spinning out ideas, fast and furious. All of them crazy—all of them acceptable. Even the craziest one.
It was when we were moving down the basement hall we saw the janitor coming at us.
It was dark still, even with a little light coming from the early morning haze. I grabbed Ruth and we ducked behind a stone pillar. We stood holding our breaths, listening to the thud of his approaching shoes.
He passed us. He was holding a flashlight but he didn’t play the beam around. He just moved straight for the open door.
Then it happened.
As he came into the patch of light from the open doorway he stopped. His head was turned away. The guy was facing the stairway.
But he was looking at us.
It knocked out what little breath I had left. I just stood there and stared at that eye in the back of his head. And, although there wasn’t any face around it, that damned eye had a smile going with it. A nasty, self-certain and frightening smile. He saw us and he was amused and wasn’t going to do anything about it.
He went through the doorway and the door thudded shut behind him, the stone wall segment slid down and shut it from view.
We stood there shivering.
“You saw it,” she finally said.
“Yes.”
“He knows we saw those engines,” she said. “Still he didn’t do anything.”
We were still talking as the elevator ascended.
“Maybe there’s nothing really wrong,” I said. “Maybe . . .”
I stopped, remembering those engines. I knew what kind they were.
“What shall we do?” she asked. I looked at her. She was scared. I put my arm around her. But I was scared too.
“We’d better get out,” I said. “Fast.”
“We have nothing packed though,” she said.
“We’ll pack then,” I said. “We’ll leave before morning. I don’t think they can do . . .”
“They?”
Why did I say that?—I wondered. They. It had to be a group though. The janitor didn’t make those engines all by himself.
I think it was the third eye that capped my theory. And when we stopped to see Phil and Marge and they asked us what happened I told them what I thought. I don’t think it surprised Ruth much. She undoubtedly thought it herself.
“I think the house is a rocket ship,” I said.
They stared at me. Phil grinned; then he stopped when he saw I wasn’t kidding.
“What?” Marge said.
“I know it sounds crazy,” I said, sounding more like my wife than she did. “But those are rocket engines. I don’t know how in the hell they got there but . . .” I shrugged helplessly at the whole idea.
“All I know is that they’re rocket engines.”
“That doesn’t mean it’s a . . . a ship?” Phil finished weakly, switching from statement to question in mid-sentence.
“Yes,” said Ruth.
And I shuddered. That seemed to settle it. She’d been right too often lately.
“But . . .” Marge shrugged. “What’s the point?”
Ruth looked at us. “I know,” she said.
“What, baby?” I asked, afraid to be asking.
“That janitor,” she said. “He’s not a man. We know that. That third eye makes it . . .”
“You mean the guy has one?” Phil asked incredulously.
I nodded. “He has one. I saw it.”
“Oh my God,” he said.
“But he’s not a man,” Ruth said again. “Humanoid, yes, but not an earthling. He might look like he does actually—except for the eye. But he might be completely different, so different he had to change his form. Give himself that extra eye just to keep track of us when we wouldn’t expect it.”
Phil ran a shaking hand through his hair.
“This is crazy,” he said.
He sank down into a chair. So did the girls. I didn’t. I felt uneasy about sticking around. I thought we should grab our hats and run. They didn’t seem to feel in immediate danger though. I finally decided it wouldn’t hurt to wait until morning. Then I’d tell Johnson or something. Nothing could happen now.
“This is crazy,” Phil said again.
“I saw those engines,” I said. “They’re really there. You can’t get away from it.”
“Listen,” Ruth said, “they’re probably extraterrestrials.”
“What are you talking about?” Marge asked irritably. She was good and afraid, I saw.
“Hon,” I contributed weakly, “you’ve been reading an awful lot of science-fiction magazines.”
Her lips drew together. “Don’t start in again,” she said. “You thought I was crazy when I suspected this place. You thought so when I told you I saw those engines. You thought so when I told you the janitor had three eyes. Well, I was right all three times. Now, give me some credit.”
I shut up. And she went on.
“What if they’re from another planet,” she rephrased for Marge’s benefit. “Suppose they want some Earth people to experiment on. To observe,” she amended quickly, I don’t know for whose benefit. The idea of being experimented on by three-eyed janitors from another planet had nothing exciting about it.
“What better way,” Ruth was saying, “of getting people than to build a rocket ship apartment house, rent it out cheap and get it full of people fast?”
She looked at us without yielding an inch.
“And then,” she said, “just wait till some morning early when everybody was asleep and . . . goodbye Earth.”
My head was whirling. It was crazy but what could I say? I’d been cleverly dubious three times. I couldn’t afford to doubt now. It wasn’t worth the risk. And, in my flesh, I sort of felt she was right.
“But the whole house,” Phil was saying. “How could they get it . . . in the air?”
“If they’re from another planet they’re probably centuries ahead of us in space travel.”
Phil started to answer. He faltered, then he said, “But it doesn’t look like a ship.”
“The house might be a shell over the ship,” I said. “It probably is. Maybe the actual ship includes only the bedrooms. That’s all they’d need. That’s where everybody would be in the early morning hours if . . .”
“No,” Ruth said. “They couldn’t knock off the shell without attracting much attention.”
We were all silent laboring under a thick cloud of confusion and half-formed fears. Half formed because you can’t shape your fears of something when you don’t even know what it is.
“Listen,” Ruth said.
It made me shudder. It made me want to tell her to shut up with her horrible forebodings. Because they made too much sense.
“Suppose it is a building,” she said. “Suppose the ship is outside of it.”
“But . . .” Marge was practically lost. She got angry because she was lost. “There’s nothing outside the house, that’s obvious!”
“Those people would be way ahead of us in science,” Ruth said. “Maybe they’ve mastered invisibility of matter.”
We all squirmed at once, I think. “Babe,” I said.
“Is it possible?” Ruth asked strongly.
I sighed. “It’s possible. Just possible.”
We were quiet. Then Ruth said, “Listen.”
“No,” I cut in. “You listen. I think maybe we’re going overboard on this thing. But there are engines in the basement and the janitor does have three eyes. On the basis of that I think we have reason enough to clear out. Now.”
We all agreed on that anyways.
“We’d better tell everybody in the building,” Ruth said. “We can’t leave them here.”
“It’ll take too long,” Marge argued.
“No, we have to,” I said. “You pack, babe, I’ll tell them.”
I headed for the door and grabbed the knob.
Which didn’t turn.
A bolt of panic drove through me. I grabbed at it and yanked hard. I thought for a second, fighting down fear, that it was locked on the inside. I checked.
It was locked on the outside.
“What is it?” Marge said in a shaking voice. You could sense a scream bubbling up in her.
“Locked,” I said.
Marge gasped. We all stared at each other.
“It’s true,” Ruth said, horrified. “Oh, my God, it’s all true then.”
I made a dash for the window. Then the place started to vibrate as if we were being hit by an earthquake. Dishes started to rattle and fall off shelves. We heard a chair crash onto its side in the kitchen.
“What is it!” Marge cried again. Phil grabbed for her as she started to whimper. Ruth ran to me and we stood there, frozen, feeling the floor rock under our feet.
“The engines!” Ruth suddenly cried. “They’re starting them!”
“They have to warm up!” I made a wild guess. “We can still get out!”
I let go of Ruth and grabbed a chair. For some reason I felt that the windows had been automatically locked too.
I hurled the chair through the glass. The vibrations were getting worse.
“Quick!” I shouted over the noise. “Out the fire escape! Maybe we can make it!”
Impelled by panic and dread, Marge and Phil came running over the shaking floor. I almost shoved them out through the gaping window hole. Marge tore her skirt. Ruth cut her fingers. I went last, dragging a glass dagger through my leg. I didn’t even feel it I was so keyed up.
I kept pushing them, hurrying down the fire escape steps. Marge caught a slipper heel in between two gratings and it snapped off. Her slipper came off. She limped, half fell down the orange-painted metal steps, her face white and twisted with fear. Ruth in her loafers clattered down behind Phil. I came last, shepherding them frantically.
We saw other people at their windows. We heard windows crashing above and below. We saw an older couple crawl hurriedly through their window and start down. They held us up.
“Look out, will you!” Marge shouted at them in a fury.
They cast a frightened look over their shoulders.
Ruth looked back at me, her face drained of color. “Are you coming?” she asked quickly, her voice shaking.
“I’m here,” I said breathlessly. I felt as if I were going to collapse on the steps. Which seemed to go on forever.
At the bottom was a ladder. We saw the old lady drop from it with a sickening thud, crying out in pain as her ankle twisted under her. Her husband dropped down and helped her up. The building was vibrating harshly now. We saw dust scaling out from between the bricks.
My voice joined the throng, all crying the same word, “Hurry!”
I saw Phil drop down. He half caught Marge, who was sobbing in fright. I heard her half-articulate “Oh, thank God!” as she landed and they started up the alleyway. Phil looked back over his shoulder at us but Marge dragged him on.
“Let me go first!” I snapped quickly. Ruth stepped aside and I swung down the ladder and dropped, feeling a sting in my insteps, a slight pain in my ankles. I looked up, extending my arms for her.
A man behind Ruth was trying to shove her aside so he could jump down.
“Look out!” I yelled like a raging animal, reduced suddenly by fear and concern. If I’d had a gun I’d have shot him.
Ruth let the man drop. He scrambled to his feet, breathing feverishly and ran down the alley. The building was shaking and quivering. The air was filled with the roar of the engines now.
“Ruth!” I yelled.
She dropped and I caught her. We regained our balance and started up the alley. I could hardly breathe. I had a stitch in my side.
As we dashed into the street we saw Johnson moving through the ranks of scattered people trying to herd them together.
“Here now!” he was calling. “Take it easy!”
We ran up to him. “Johnson!” I said. “The ship, it’s . . .”
“Ship?” He looked incredulous.
“The house! It’s a rocket ship! It’s . . .” The ground shook wildly.
Johnson turned away to grab someone running past. My breath caught and Ruth gasped, throwing her hands to her cheeks.
Johnson was still looking at us; with that third eye. The one that had a smile with it.
“No,” Ruth said shakily. “No.”
And then the sky, which was growing light, grew dark. My head snapped around. Women were screaming their lungs out in terror. I looked in all directions.
Solid walls were blotting out the sky.
“Oh my God,” Ruth said. “We can’t get out. It’s the whole block.”
Then the rockets started.