Know Thy Neighbor Page 2
was injured. Martin'sdefense, according to police records, was that he was attempting toapprehend a 'pale-green, claw-handed' customer who fled after eating alive mouse and threatening Martin.
"Upon questioning, Martin admitted that the unidentified customer hadbeen in the bar for several hours and appeared perfectly normal. But heinsisted, 'When I refused to serve him after he ate the mouse, he turnedgreen and threatened to claw me to death.' Martin has a permit to carrythe gun and was dismissed with a fifty dollar fine and a warning byJudge Greely against sampling his own stock too freely."
Drunken fool, thought Ellen. With fresh indignation, she remembered thedisturbance in her own hall this morning. Nothing but drunks andgangsters in this neighborhood. She thought vaguely of looking at the"For Rent" section of the want ads.
There was a noise on the fire escape. Ellen reached over and lifted upthe shade. The janitor was standing there with a big paper sack in hishand.
Ellen opened the window and asked, "How do you think it got there,Pete?"
"I dunno. Maybe fall offa the roof. Musta been in a fight."
"What makes you think so?"
"Neck's all torn. Big teeth marks. Maybe dog get him."
"Up here?"
"Somebody find, maybe throw here--I dunno." Pete scratched his head."You don't worry any more, though. I take away now. No smell, even."
He grinned at her and scuttled to the other end of the fire escape wherehe climbed through the window to the fourth floor corridor.
Ellen poured herself a second cup of coffee and lighted anothercigarette, then turned to the woman's page in the paper. She read theAdvice Column and the Psychology and glanced through the "HelpWanted--Women" in the classifieds. That finished the morning's reading.She looked at her watch. Almost ten.
She carried her coffee cup to the sink, rinsed it out and set it on thedrainboard. There was still a cup or more coffee left in the pot. Thatcould be warmed over later, but she took out the filler and dumped thegrounds into the paper bag that held garbage. The bag was almost full.
I'll throw it in the incinerator now, she thought, before I straightenthe apartment.
She emptied the ashtrays--the one beside her bed and the other on thebreakfast table--then started down the hall with the garbage bag in herhand.
* * * * *
The incinerator chute was at the rear of the hall, next to the servicestairs. Ellen could see the door standing slightly open. She hesitated.410 might be there. It was bad enough to ride in the elevator with him,feeling his eyes on her, but there was something unbearably intimateabout standing beside him, emptying garbage.
The door seemed to move a little, but nobody came out. She waitedanother minute. Oh, well, maybe the last person out there just forgot toshut the door tight. She opened it wider, stepped out on the stairlanding. No one was there.
The chute was wide, almost three feet around. Ellen opened the top andstarted to throw the bag down. Something was stuck in there. Her eyessaw it, but her brain refused to believe.
What was there, blocking the chute, looked like--looked like--achicken's foot, gnarled, clawed, but as large as a human foot--and anugly, sickly green!
Automatically, she reached in and clutched it. Her stomach turned at thecold feel of the thing, but still she tugged at it, trying to work itloose. It was heavy. She pulled with all her strength, felt it start toslide back up the chute. Then it was free!
She gaped in sick horror at the thing she held. Her hand opened weaklyand she sat down on the floor, her head swimming and her throat musclesretching. Dimly, she heard the thing rattle and bump down to theincinerator in the basement.
The full horror of it gradually hit home. Ellen stood up, swaying, andran blindly down the hall. Her feet thudded on the carpeted floor. Asshe passed 404, she was vaguely conscious of Mrs. Moffatt's concernedface poking around the door.
"Is there something wrong, Miss Tighe?"
"No," Ellen managed to gasp "It's all right--really--all right."
She kept on running, burst through the apartment door, slammed it behindher, fell on her knees in the bathroom and became thoroughly, violentlyill.
She continued to kneel, unable to think, her head against the coolporcelain bowl. Finally, she stood up weakly, ran cold water, washed herface and streaming eyes. Thank God the wall bed was still down! She fellon it, shaking.
* * * * *
What was that unbelievable ghastly, impossible thing? It was the size ofa man, but thin, skeleton thin, and the color of brackish water. It hadtwo legs, two arms, like a man ... but ending with those huge, birdlikeclaws. Heaven alone knew what its face was like. She had let go beforeit was that far clear of the chute.
She thought of the story in the paper. So that was what the bartendersaw! He wasn't drunk at all, and what happened when he told the police?They laughed at him. They'd laugh at me, too, she thought. The proof isgone, burned up in the incinerator. Why did this happen to me? Dead catson the fire escape, dead monsters in the incinerator chute ... it's thisterrible neighborhood!
She tried to think coherently. Maybe the cat had something to do withit. The bartender said the thing ate a mouse--maybe it had tried to eatthe cat, too. A monster like that might eat anything. Her stomachstarted churning again at the thought.
But what was it doing in the incinerator chute? Someone in the buildingmust have put it there, thinking it would slide all the way down and beburned up. Who? One of _them_, probably. But there couldn't be any moregreen monsters around. They can't live in an apartment house, walk thestreets like anyone else, not even in this neighborhood.
She remembered something else in the bartender's story. He said itlooked perfectly normal at first. That meant they could look like humansif they wanted to. Hypnotism? Then any man could be....
Suddenly another thought struck her. Supposing they find out I saw--whatwill they do to me?
She jumped up from the bed, white with fear, her faintness forgotten inthe urge to escape. She snatched her bag from the dresser, threw on herbrown coat.
At the door, she hesitated, afraid to venture into the hall, yet afraidto stay inside. Finally, she eased open the door, peered out into thecorridor. It was deserted. She ran to the elevator, punched the bell,heard the car begin its creaky, protesting ascent.
The elevator door had an automatic spring closing. The first time shetried it, her hands shook and the door sprang closed before she got in.She tried it again. This time she managed to hold it open long enough toget inside. She pushed the button, felt the elevator shake and grind andmove slowly down.
Out into the lobby.
Out into the street.
* * * * *
The fog was completely gone now. The sun shone on the still-damp street.There were very few people around--The Tenderloin sleeps late. She wentinto the restaurant next door, sat down at the white-tiled counter. Shewas the only customer. A sleepy-eyed waitress, her black hair untidilycaught into a net, waited, pad in hand.
"Just coffee," Ellen mumbled.
She drank it black and it scalded her throat going down. The waitressput a nickel in the juke box and then Bing Crosby was singing "EasterParade." Everything was so normal. Listening to Bing Crosby, how couldyou believe in things like green monsters? In this sane, prosaicatmosphere, Ellen thought, I must be batty.
She said to herself, "I'm Ellen Tighe, bookkeeper, and I just saw thebody of a green man with claws on his feet...." No, that didn't help abit. Put it this way: "I'm Ellen Tighe and I'm 27 years old and I'm notmarried. Let's face it, any psychiatrist will tell you that's enoughcause for neurosis. So I'm having delusions."
It made more sense that way. I read that story in the paper, Ellenthought, and it must have registered way down in my subconscious. Thathad to be it. Any other way, it was too horrible, too impossible to beborne.
I'll go back to the apartment and call Dr. Clive, thought Ellen. She hadthe feeling, no doubt held ov
er from the days of measles and mumps, thata doctor could cure anything, even green monsters on the brain.
She drank the last of the coffee and fished in her coin purse forchange. Picking up the check, she walked over to the cash register atthe end of the counter, facing the street. The untidy waitress came fromthe back of the restaurant to take the money.
Ellen looked out at the street through the glass front. The man from 410was standing out there, smoking a cigarette, watching her. When theireyes met, he abruptly threw away the cigarette and started walkingtoward the apartment house. Again she felt that faint dread she hadexperienced in the hall earlier.
The waitress picked up her quarter, gave her back a nickel and a dime.Ellen put the change into her purse, got out her key chain and held itin her hand while she walked quickly next door. 410 was just ahead ofher in the lobby; he held the front door open