Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Richard Matheson Suspense Novels: The Shrinking Man, Camp Pleasant, Hunger & Thirst, 7 Steps to Midnight
    Richard Matheson Suspense Novels: The Shrinking Man, Camp Pleasant, Hunger & Thirst, 7 Steps to Midnight
    Richard Matheson Suspense Novels: The Shrinking Man, Camp Pleasant, Hunger & Thirst, 7 Steps to Midnight
    Ebook1,761 pages

    Richard Matheson Suspense Novels: The Shrinking Man, Camp Pleasant, Hunger & Thirst, 7 Steps to Midnight

    By Richard Matheson

    ()

    Read preview

    • Survival

    • Fear

    • Desperation

    • Mystery

    • Death

    • Man Vs. Nature

    • Man Vs. Self

    • Fish Out of Water

    • Hero's Journey

    • Love Triangle

    • Mentor

    • Star-Crossed Lovers

    • Loyal Friend

    • Unrequited Love

    • Ticking Clock

    • Love

    • Suspense

    • Family

    • Friendship

    • Adventure

    About this ebook

    Ordinary people face hair-raising dangers in these four early suspense novels by the celebrated author of I Am Legend.

    The Shrinking Man
    In this sci-fi suspense classic adapted into multiple films, a man exposed to radiation begins to shrink at an alarming rate. As his life crumbles, he must survive menacing attacks from house cats and spiders.

    Camp Pleasant
    An idyllic summer camp turns horrifying when a young counselor is the witness to the murder of the new camp director. The mystery unfolds in a “simple style that recalls Hemingway” (Publishers Weekly).

    Hunger and Thirst
    In this previously unpublished early novel, a man is shot during a robbery gone wrong and wakes up to find himself paralyzed. Lying in his hospital bed, he flashes back to his difficult life and hopes for redemption.

    7 Steps to Midnight
    At the end of an ordinary workday, mathematician Chris Barton finds a stranger living in his house, claiming to be him. Thrust into a surreal world of violence and mystery, Chris must go on the run and follow a series of cryptic clues to regain his life.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateOct 16, 2020
    ISBN9780795351099
    Richard Matheson Suspense Novels: The Shrinking Man, Camp Pleasant, Hunger & Thirst, 7 Steps to Midnight
    Author

    Richard Matheson

    Richard Matheson was one of the great writers of modern science fiction and fantasy. A New York Times bestselling author and screenwriter, his novels included I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man and many others. Stephen King called Matheson 'the author who influenced me the most as a writer'. A Grand Master of Horror and past winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement, He also won multiple other awards including the Edgar, the Hugo, the Spur, and the Writer's Guild awards. Richard Matheson passed away in June 2013.

    Read more from Richard Matheson

    Related to Richard Matheson Suspense Novels

    Related ebooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      A Year in Reading: Paul Tremblay

      Dec 3, 2020

      For the first time in weeks, I was swept along into that trance, that magic inner space where stories live. The post A Year in Reading: Paul Tremblay appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Speaking Of Horror

      Sep 12, 2020

      Speaking Of Horror
      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels

      Jun 19, 2019

      A list of books so scary you definitely won't keep them on your nightstand. The post Terrify Yourself with These Ten Horror Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Soundtrack Of My Life

      Jul 23, 2019

      The Soundtrack Of My Life
      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Like 'Goosebumps?' Here's Another 30 Years' Worth Of Horror For Kids

      Aug 12, 2018

      From the late '60s to the rise of Harry Potter in the late '90s, horror fiction had a hold on young readers, and there was something to scare everyone, from realistic thrillers to possessed dummies.

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Paul Tremblay

      Jun 17, 2020

      IT’S ALWAYS BEEN ONE OF MY BIGGEST FEARS that I would live to see the end of everything,” says Paul Tremblay, speaking to SFX from his Massachusetts home in the middle of lockdown. It’s a singularly peculiar time, and a peculiar interview for him to

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Horror Within

      Aug 29, 2020

      Stephen King’s supreme craftsmanship lies in his ability to allow the reader to build up the horror in her/ his mind instead of explicitly describing it. Most often, this horror lurks in the most mundane situations and in the most ordinary lives, unt

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Carnival Of Souls

      Nov 11, 2021

      Carnival Of Souls
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Leading Lights Of Horror

      Jun 4, 2020

      The Horror Writers Association (HWA) 2019 Bram Stoker Awards for ‘superior achievements’ in the genre have been awarded as follows: Superior Achievement in a Novel, Coyote Rage, Owl Goingback; First Novel, The Bone Weaver’s Orchard, Sarah Read; Young

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      WIL WHEATON on Stand By Me

      Nov 18, 2022

      WIL WHEATON on Stand By Me
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Klipspringer

      Mar 26, 2021

      The Klipspringer
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      New Nature Writer Of The Year 2021 Runner-up

      Sep 23, 2021

      Former local government worker Mike is a keen walker and wildlife enthusiast, based in North Yorkshire. Prize judge Stephen Moss praised his entry as: “A delightful recollection of a long-ago boyhood, written with imagination and a real sense of the

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Face To Face

      Nov 7, 2024

      Face To Face
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Whistling Up Wigeon Galore

      Nov 24, 2021

      Whistling Up Wigeon Galore
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Mother Culture

      Jun 4, 2020

      Mother Culture
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Angel Of Death

      Mar 27, 2018

      I could see the wave coming long before it arrived. It looked like a length of rope uncoiling as the swell hit the edge of the reef and spun towards me, a beady eye staring me down in slow motion as it got closer. It was my first time surfing Speedie

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      When Tracks Lead to Trouble

      Nov 2, 2020

      When Tracks Lead to Trouble
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Richard Matheson Suspense Novels

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Richard Matheson Suspense Novels - Richard Matheson

      SUSPENSE NOVELS

      The Shrinking Man

      Camp Pleasant

      Hunger and Thirst

      7 Steps to Midnight

      RICHARD MATHESON

      New York, 2017

      Table of Contents

      The Shrinking Man

      Camp Pleasant

      Hunger and Thirst

      7 Steps to Midnight

      The Shrinking Man

      Richard Matheson

      Copyright

      The Shrinking Man

      Copyright © 1956 by Richard Matheson; renewed 1984 by Richard Matheson

      Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by RosettaBooks, LLC

      All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher or the author.

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

      ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795315701

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      CHAPTER

      ONE

      First he thought it was a tidal wave. Then he saw that the sky and ocean were visible through it and it was a curtain of spray rushing at the boat.

      He’d been sunbathing on top of the cabin. It was just coincidence that he pushed up on his elbow and saw it coming.

      Marty! he yelled. There was no answer. He scuttled across the hot wood and slid down the deck. Hey, Marty!

      The spray didn’t look menacing, but for some reason he wanted to avoid it. He ran around the cabin, wincing at the hot planks underfoot. It would be a race.

      Which he lost. One moment he was in sunlight. The next he was being soaked by the warm, glittering spray.

      Then it was past. He stood there watching it sweep across the water, sun-glowing drops of it covering him. Suddenly he twitched and looked down. There was a curious tingling on his skin.

      He grabbed for a towel and dried himself. It wasn’t so much pain as a pleasant stinging, like that of lotion on newly shaven cheeks.

      Then he was dry and the feeling was almost gone. He went below and woke up his brother and told him about the curtain of spray that had run across the boat.

      It was the beginning.

      CHAPTER

      TWO

      The spider rushed at him across the shadowed sands, scrabbling wildly on its stalklike legs. Its body was a giant, glossy egg that trembled blackly as it charged across the windless mounds, its wake a score of sand-trickling scratches.

      Paralysis locked the man. He saw the poisonous glitter of the spider eyes. He watched it scramble across a loglike stick, body mounted high on its motion-blurred legs, as high as the man’s shoulders.

      Behind him, suddenly, the steel-encased flame flared into life with a thunder that shook the air. It jarred the man loose. With a sucking gasp, he spun around and ran, the damp sand crunching beneath his racing sandals.

      He fled through lakes of light and into darkness again, his face a mask of terror. Beams of sunlight speared across his panic-driven path, cold shadows enveloped it. Behind, the giant spider scoured sand in its pursuit.

      Suddenly the man slipped. A cry tore back his lips. He skidded to a knee, then pitched forward onto outstretched palms. He felt the cold sands shaking with the vibration of the roaring flame. He pushed himself up desperately, palms flaking sand, and started running again.

      Fleeing, he glanced back across his shoulder and saw that the spider was gaining on him, its pulsing egg of a body perched on running legs—an egg whose yolk swam with killing poisons. He raced on, breathless, terror in his veins.

      Suddenly the cliff edge was before him, shearing off abruptly to a gray, perpendicular face. He raced along the edge, not looking down into the vast canyon below. The giant spider scuttled after him, the sound of its running a delicate scraping on the stone. It was closer still.

      The man dashed between two giant cans that loomed like tanks above him. He threaded, racing, in between the silent bulks of all the clustered cans, past green and red and yellow sides all caked with livid smears. The spider had to climb above them, unable to move its swollen body rapidly enough between them. It slithered up the side of one, then sped across their metal tops, bridging the gaps between them with sudden, jerking hops.

      As the man started out into the open again, he heard a scratching sound above. Recoiling and jerking back his head, he saw the spider just about to leap on him, two legs slipping down a metal side, the rest clutching at the top.

      With a terrified gasp, the man dived again into the space between the giant cans, half running, half stumbling back along the winding route. Behind him, the spider drew itself back up to the top and, backing around in a twitching semicircle, started after him again.

      The move gained seconds for the man, lunging out into the shadow-swept sands again, he raced around the great stone pillar and through another stack of tanlike structures. The spider leaped down on the sand and scurried in pursuit.

      The great orange mass loomed over the man now as he headed once more for the edge of the cliff. There was no time for hesitation. With an extra springing of his legs, he flung himself across the gulf and clutched with spastic fingers at the roughened ledge.

      Wincing, he drew himself onto the splintered orange surface just as the spider reached the cliff’s edge. Jumping up, the man began running along the narrow ledge, not looking back. If the spider jumped that gap, it was over.

      The spider did not jump it. Glancing back, the man saw that and, stopping, stood there looking at the spider. Was he safe now that he was out of the spider’s territory?

      His pale cheek twitched as he saw thread-twined cable pour like shimmering vapor from the spider’s tubes.

      Twisting around, he began running again, knowing that, as soon as the cable was long enough, air currents would lift it, it would cling to the orange ledge, and the black spider would clamber up it.

      He tried to run faster, but he couldn’t. His legs ached, breath was a hot burning in his throat, a stitch drove dagger points into his side. He ran and skidded down the orange slope, jumping the gaps with desperate, weakening lunges.

      Another edge. The man knelt quickly, tremblingly, and, holding tight, let himself over. It was a long drop to the next level. The man waited until his body was swinging inward, then let go. Just before he fell, he saw the great spider scrabbling down the orange slope at him.

      He landed on his feet and toppled forward on the hard wood. Pain drove needles up his right ankle. He struggled to his feet; he couldn’t stop. Overhead, he heard the spider’s scratching. Running to the edge, he hesitated, then jumped into space again. The arm-thick curve of the metal wicket flashed up at him. He grabbed for it.

      He fell with a fluttering of arms and legs. The canyon floor rushed up at him. He had to miss the flower-patched softness.

      And yet he didn’t. Almost at the edge of it, he landed feet first and bounced over backward in a neck-snapping somersault.

      He lay on his stomach and chest, breathing in short, strangled bursts. There was a smell of dusty cloth in his nostrils, and fabric was rough against his cheek.

      Alertness returned then and, with a spasmodic wrenching of muscles, the man looked up and saw another ghostlike cable being spun into the air. In a few moments, he knew, the spider would ride it down.

      Pushing up with a groan, he stood a moment on trembling legs. The ankle still hurt, breathing was a strain, but there were no broken bones. He started off.

      Hobbling quickly across the flower-splotched softness, the man lowered himself across the edge. As he did so, he saw the spider swinging down, a terrible, wriggling pendulum.

      He was on the floor of the canyon now. He ran, limping across the wide plain of it, his sandals flopping on the leveled hardness. To his right loomed the vast brown tower in which the flame still burned, the very canyon trembling with its roar.

      He glanced behind. The spider was dropping to the flower-covered softness now, then rushing for the edge. The man raced on toward the great log pile, which was half as high as the tower itself. He ran by what looked like a giant, coiled serpent, red and still and open-jawed at either end.

      The spider hit the canyon floor and ran at the man.

      But the man had reached the gigantic logs now, and, falling forward on his chest, he wriggled into a narrow space between two of them. It was so narrow he could hardly move; dark, damp, cold, and smelling of moldy wood. He crawled and twisted in as far as he could, then stopped and looked back.

      The black, shiny-cased spider was trying to follow him.

      For a horrible moment, the man thought it was succeeding. Then he saw that it was stuck and had to pull back. It could not follow.

      Closing his eyes, the man lay there on the canyon floor, feeling the chill of it through his clothes, panting through his opened mouth, wondering how many more times he would have to flee the spider.

      The flame in the steel tower went out then, and there was silence except for the spider’s scratching at the rock floor as it moved about restlessly. He could hear it scraping on the logs as it clambered over them, searching for a way to get at him.

      When at last the scratching sounds had gone, the man backed himself cautiously out from the narrow, splinter-edged passage between the logs. Out on the floor again, he stood with wary haste and looked in all directions to see where the spider was.

      High up on the sheer wall he saw it climbing toward the cliff edge, its dark legs drawing its great egg of a body up the perpendicular face. A shaking breath trickled from the man’s nostrils. He was safe for another while. Lowering his gaze, he started toward his sleeping place.

      He limped slowly past the silent steel tower, which was an oil burner; past the huge red serpent, which was a nozzle-less garden hose clumsily coiled on the floor, past the wide cushion whose case was covered with flower designs; past the immense orange structure, which was a stack of two wooden lawn chairs; past the great croquet mallets hanging in their racks. One of the wickets from the croquet set had been stuck in a groove on the top lawn chair. It was what the man, in his flight, had grabbed for and missed. And the tanklike cans were used paint cans, and the spider was a black widow.

      He lived in a cellar.

      Now he walked past the towering clothes tree toward his sleeping place, which was underneath a water heater. Just before he reached it, he twitched sharply as, in its concrete cave, the water pump lurched into spinning motion. He listened to its labored wheezing and sighing, which sounded like the breathing of a dying dragon.

      Then he clambered up the cement block on which the looming, enamel-faced heater rested and crawled under its protective warmth.

      For a long time, motionless, he lay on his bed, which was a rectangular sponge around which a torn handkerchief was wrapped. His chest rose and fell with shallow movements, his hands lay limp and curled at his sides. Without blinking, he stared up at the rust-caked bottom of the heater.

      The last week.

      Three words and a concept. A concept that had begun in a flash of incomprehensive shock and become the intensely intimate moment-by-moment horror it now was. The last week. No, not even that now, because Monday was already half over. His eyes strayed briefly to the row of charcoal strokes on the wood scrap that was his calendar. Monday, March the tenth.

      In six days he would be gone.

      Across the vast reaches of the cellar, the oil-burner flame roared up again, and he felt the bed vibrate under him. That meant the temperature had fallen in the house above and that the thermostat had kicked a switch and now heat was flowing again through the floor grilles.

      He thought of them up there, the woman and the little girl. His wife and daughter. Were they still that to him? Or had the element of size removed him from their sphere? Could he still be considered a part of their world when he was the size of a bug to them, when even Beth could crush him underfoot and never know it?

      In six days he would be gone.

      He’d thought about it a thousand times in the past year and a half, trying to visualize it. He’d never been able to. Invariably, his mind had rebelled against it, rationalizing: the injections would start to work now, the process would end by itself, something would happen. It was impossible that he could ever be so small that…

      Yet he was; so small that in six days he would be gone.

      When it came on him, this cruel despair, he would lie for hours on his makeshift bed, not caring whether he lived or died. The despair had never really gone. How could it? For no matter what adjustment he thought he was making, it was obviously impossible to adjust, because there had never been a tapering or a leveling off. The process had gone on and on, ceaseless.

      He twisted on the bed in restless agony. Why did he run from the spider? Why not let it catch him? The thing would be out of his hands then. It would be a hideous death, but it would be quick; despair would be ended. And yet he kept fleeing from it, and improvising and struggling and existing.

      Why?

      68″

      When he told her, the first thing she did was laugh.

      It was not a long laugh. Almost instantly it had been choked off and she stood mutely before him, staring. Because he wasn’t smiling, because his face was a taut blankness.

      "Shrinking?" The word was spoken in a trembling whisper.

      Yes. It was all he could manage to say.

      But that’s—

      She’d been about to say that was impossible. But it wasn’t impossible, because now that the word had been spoken, it crystallized all the unspoken dread she’d felt since this had begun, a month before; since Scott’s first visit to Dr. Branson, when he’d been checked for possible bowing of the legs or dropping of the arches, and the doctor’s first diagnosis of loss of weight due to the trip and the new environment and his pushing aside of the possibility that Scott was losing height as well.

      The dread had grown through the passing days of tense, frightened suspicion while Scott kept growing shorter; through the second visit to Branson and the third; through the X-rays and the blood tests; through the entire bone survey, the search for signs of bone-mass decrease, the search for a pituitary tumor; through the long days of more X-raying and the grim search for cancer. Through today and this moment.

      But that’s impossible.

      She had to say it. They were the only words her mind and lips would form.

      He shook his head slowly, dazedly.

      It’s what he said, he answered. He said my height’s decreased more than half an inch in the last four days. He swallowed. But it’s not just my height I’m losing. Every part of me seems to be shrinking. Proportionately.

      "No. There was adamant refusal in her voice. It was the only reaction she could make to such an idea. That’s all?" she asked, almost angrily. "That’s all he can say?"

      "Honey, it’s what’s happening, he said. He showed me X-rays—the ones he took four days ago and the ones he took today. It’s true. I’m shrinking." He spoke as though he’d been kicked violently in the stomach, half dazed, half breathless with shock.

      No. This time she sounded more frightened then resolute. We’ll go to a specialist, she said.

      He wants me to, Scott said. He said I should go to the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York. But—

      Then you will, she said before he could go on.

      "Honey, the cost he said painfully. We already owe—"

      What has that got to do with it? Do you think for one moment—

      A nervous tremor broke her words off. She stood trembling, arms crossed, her hands clutched at her loose-fleshed upper arms. It was the first time since it had started that she’d let him see how afraid she was.

      Lou. He put his arms around her. It’s all right, honey, it’s all right.

      "It isn’t. You have to go to that center. You have to."

      All right, all right, he murmured. I will.

      What did he say they’d do? she asked, and he could hear the desperate need for hope in her voice.

      He… He licked his lips, trying to remember. Oh, he said they’d check my endocrine glands; my thyroid, pituitary—my sex glands. He said they’d give me a basal metabolism. Some other tests.

      Her lips pressed in.

      If he knows that, she said, why did he have to say what he did about—about shrinking? That’s not good doctoring. It’s thoughtless.

      Honey, I asked him, he said. I established it when I started all the tests. I told him I didn’t want any secrets. What else could he—

      "All right, she broke in. But did he have to call it… what he did?"

      "That’s what it is, Lou, he said in anguish. There’s evidence for it. Those X-rays…"

      He could be wrong, Scott, she said. He’s not infallible.

      He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Then quietly, he said, Look at me.

      When it had begun, he was a six-footer. Now he looked straight across into his wife’s eyes; and his wife was five feet, eight inches tall.

      ***

      Hopelessly he dropped the fork on his plate.

      How can we? he asked. "The cost Lou, the cost. It’ll take at least a month’s hospitalization; Branson said so. A month away from work. Marty’s already upset as it is. How can I expect him to go on paying me my salary when I don’t even—"

      Honey, your health comes first, she said in a nerve-flaring voice. "Marty knows that. You know it."

      He lowered his head, teeth clenched behind drawn lips. Every bill was a chain that weighed him down. He could almost feel the heavy links forged around his limbs.

      And what do we— he began, stopping as he noticed Beth staring at him, her supper forgotten.

      Eat your food, Lou told her. Beth started a little, then dug her fork into a mound of gravy-topped potatoes.

      How do we pay for it? Scott asked. There’s no medical insurance. I owe Marty five hundred dollars for the tests I’ve already taken. He exhaled heavily. And the GI loan may not even go through.

      You’re going, she said.

      Easily said, he answered.

      All right, what would you rather do? she snapped with the temper of fear in her voice. Forget it? Accept what the doctor said? Just sit back and— A sob swallowed her words.

      The hand he put over hers was not a comforting one. It was as cold and almost as shaky as hers.

      All right, he murmured. All right, Lou.

      Later, while she was putting Beth to bed, he stood in the darkened living room watching the cars drive by on the street below. Except for the murmuring voices in the back bedroom, there was no sound in the apartment. The cars swished and hummed past the building, their headlights probing ahead at the dark pavement.

      He was thinking about his application for life insurance. It had been part of the plan in coming East. First working for his brother, then applying for a GI loan with the idea of becoming a partner in Marty’s business. Acquiring life and medical insurance, a bank account, a decent car, clothes, eventually a house. Building a structure of security around himself and his family.

      Now this, disrupting the plan. Threatening to destroy it altogether.

      He didn’t know at what precise second the question came to him. But suddenly it was terribly there and he was staring fixedly at his upheld, spread-fingered hands, his heart throbbing and swollen in an icy trap.

      How long could he go on shrinking?

      CHAPTER

      THREE

      Finding water to drink was not a problem for him. The tank near the electric pump had a minute leak on its bottom surface. Beneath its dripping he placed a thimble he had carried once from a sewing box in a cardboard carton underneath the fuel-oil tank. The thimble was always overflowing with crystal well water.

      It was food that was the problem now. The quarter loaf of stale bread he’d been eating for the past five weeks was gone now. He’d finished the last crunchy scraps of it for his evening meal, washed it down with water. Bread and cold water had been his diet since he’d been imprisoned in the cellar.

      He walked slowly across the darkening floor, moving toward the white, cobwebbed tower that stood near the steps leading up to the closed cellar doors. The last of the daylight filtered through the grime-streaked windows—the one that overlooked the sand hills of the spider’s territory, the one over the fuel tank, and the one over the log pile. The pale illumination fell in wide gray bars across the concrete floor, forming a patchwork of light and darkness through which he walked. In a little while the cellar would be a cold pit of night.

      He had mused for many hours on the possibility of somehow managing to reach the string that dangled over the floor and pulling down on it so the dust-specked bulb would light, driving away the terror of blackness. But there was no way of reaching the string. It hung, for him, a hundred feet above his head, completely unattainable.

      Scott Carey walked around the dull white vastness of the refrigerator. It had been stored there since they’d first moved to the house—was it only months before? It seemed a century.

      It was the old-fashioned type of refrigerator, one whose coils were encased in a cylindrical enclosure on its top. There was an open box of crackers beside that cylinder. As far as he knew, it was the only food remaining in the entire cellar.

      He’d known the cracker box was on the refrigerator even before he’d become trapped down there. He’d left it there for himself one afternoon long before. No, not so long before, as time went. But, somehow, days seemed longer now. It was as if hours were designed for normal people. For anyone smaller, the hours were proportionately magnified.

      It was an illusion, of course, but, in his tininess, he was plagued by manifold illusions; the illusion that he was not shrinking, but the world enlarging; the illusion that objects were what they were thought to be only when the person who thought of them was of normal size.

      For him—he couldn’t help it—the oil burner had virtually lost its role of heating apparatus. It was, almost actually, a giant tower in whose bowels there roared a magic flame. And the hose was, almost actually, a quiescent viper, sleeping in giant, scarlet coils. The three-quarter wall beside the burner was a cliff face, the sands a terrible desert across whose hills crawled not a spider the size of a man’s thumbnail, but a venomous monster almost as tall as he was.

      Reality was relative. He was more forcefully aware of it with every passing day. In six days reality would be blotted out for him—not by death, but a hideously simple act of disappearance.

      For what reality could there be at zero inches?

      Yet he went on. Here he was scanning the sheer face of the refrigerator, wondering how he might get up there and reach the crackers.

      A sudden roar made him jump and spin around, his heart thudding.

      It was only the oil burner leaping into life again, the rumble of its mechanism making the floor beneath him tremble, sending numbing vibrations up his legs. He swallowed with effort. It was a jungle life he led, each sound a warning of potential death.

      It was getting too dark. The cellar was a frightening place when it was dark. He hurried across the chilled expanse of it, shivering under the tentlike robe he had made by poking a head hole in a piece of cloth, then ripping the edges into dangling strips and tying them into knots. The clothes he had been wearing when he had first tumbled into the cellar now lay in dirty heaps beside the water heater. He had worn them as long as he could, rolling up sleeves and cuffs, tightening the waistband, keeping them on until their sagging volume hampered movement. Then he had made the robe. He was always cold now except when he was under the water heater.

      He broke into a nervous, hopping walk, suddenly anxious to be off the darkening floor. His gaze flew for a moment to the cliff edge high above and he twitched again, thinking he saw the spider clambering over. He’d started to run before he saw that it was only a shadow. His run slowed again to the erratic, jerky walk. Adjust? he thought. Who could adjust to this?

      When he was back under the heater, he dragged a box top over his bed and lay down to rest underneath its shelter.

      He was still shivering. He could smell the dry, acrid odor of the cardboard close to his face, and it seemed as if he were being smothered. It was another illusion he suffered nightly.

      He struggled to attain sleep. He’d worry about the crackers tomorrow, when it was light. Or maybe he would not worry about them at all. Maybe he’d just lie there and let hunger and thirst finish what he could not finish, despite all dismays.

      Nonsense! he thought furiously. If he hadn’t done it before this, it wasn’t likely that he could do it now.

      64″

      Louise guided the blue Ford around the wide, graded arc that led from Queens Boulevard to the Cross Island Parkway. There was no sound but the valve-knocking rumble of the motor. Idle conversation had faded off a quarter-mile after they’d emerged from the Midtown Tunnel. Scott had even jabbed in the shiny radio button and cut off the quiet music. Now he sat staring glumly through the windshield, vision glazed to all but thought.

      The tension had begun long before Louise came to the Center to get him.

      He’d been building himself up to it ever since he’d told the doctors that he was leaving. For that matter, the blocks of anger had been piling up from the moment he’d entered the Center. Dread of the financial burden had constructed the first one, a block whose core was the dragging weight of further insecurity. Each nerve-spent, fruitless day at the Center had added more blocks.

      Then to have Louise not only angrily upset at his decision, but unable to hide her shock at seeing him four inches shorter than herself—it had been too much. He’d scarcely spoken from the moment she’d entered his room, and what he had said had been quiet, withdrawn, each sentence shackled by reserve.

      Now they were driving past the understated richness of the Jamaica estates. Scott hardly noticed them. He was thinking about the impossible future.

      What? he asked, starting a little.

      I said, did you have breakfast?

      Oh. Yes. About eight, I guess.

      Are you hungry? Shall I stop?

      No.

      He glanced at her, at the tense indecision apparent on her face.

      "Well, say it, he said. Say it, for God’s sake, and get it off your chest."

      He saw the smooth flesh on her throat contract in a swallow.

      What is there to say? she asked.

      That’s right. He nodded in short, jerky movements. That’s right, make it sound like my fault. I’m an idiot who doesn’t want to know what’s wrong with himself. I’m—

      He was finished before he could get started. The undertow of nagging, unspoken dread in him swallowed all attempts at concentrated rage. Temper could come only in sporadic bursts to a man living with consistent horror.

      You know how I feel, Scott, she said.

      Sure I know how you feel, he said. You don’t have to pay the bills, though.

      I told you I’d be more than willing to work.

      There’s no use arguing about it, he said. Your working wouldn’t help any. We’d still go under. He blew out a tired breath. What’s the difference anyway? They didn’t find a thing.

      "Scott, that doctor said it might take months! You didn’t even let them finish their tests. How can you—"

      What do they think I’m going to do? he burst out. "Go on letting them play with me? Oh, you haven’t been there, you haven’t seen. They’re like kids with a new toy! A shrinking man, Godawmighty, a shrinking man! It makes their damn eyes light up. All they’re interested in is my ‘incredible catabolism.’"

      What difference does it make? she asked. They’re still some of the best doctors in the country.

      And some of the most expensive, he countered. If they’re so damned fascinated, why didn’t they offer to give me the tests free? I even asked one of them about it. You’d’ve thought I was insulting his mother’s virtue.

      She didn’t say anything. Her chest rose and fell with disturbed breath.

      I’m tired of being tested, he went on, not wanting to sink into the comfortless isolation of silence again. "I’m tired of basal-metabolism tests and protein-bound tests; tired of drinking radioactive iodine and barium-powdered water; tired of X-rays and blood cultures and Geiger counters on my throat and having my temperature taken a million times a day. You haven’t been through it; you don’t know. It’s like a—an inquisition. And what the hell’s the point? They haven’t found a thing. Not a thing! And they never will. And I can’t see owing them thousands of dollars for nothing!"

      He fell back against the seat and closed his eyes. Fury was unsatisfying when it was leveled against an undeserving subject. But it would not disappear for all that. It burned like a flame inside him.

      They weren’t finished, Scott.

      The bills don’t matter to you, he said.

      "You matter to me," she answered.

      And who’s the ‘security’ bug in this marriage, anyway? he asked.

      That’s not fair.

      Isn’t it? What brought us here from California in the first place? Me? Because I decided I just had to go into business with Marty? I was happy out there. I didn’t— He drew in a shaking breath and let it empty from his lungs. Forget it, he said. I’m sorry, I apologize. But I’m not going back.

      You’re angry and hurt, Scott. That’s why you won’t go back.

      I won’t go back because it’s pointless! he shouted.

      They drove in silence for a few minutes. Then she said, Scott, do you really believe I’d hold my own security above your health?

      He didn’t answer.

      "Do you?"

      Why talk about it? he said.

      ***

      The next morning, Saturday, he received the sheaf of application papers from the life-insurance company and tore them into pieces and threw the pieces into the wastebasket. Then he went for a long, miserable walk. And while he was out he thought about God creating heaven and earth in seven days.

      He was shrinking a seventh of an inch a day.

      ***

      It was quiet in the cellar. The oil burner had just shut itself off, the clanking wheeze of the water pump had been silenced for an hour. He lay under the cardboard box top listening to the silence, exhausted but unable to rest. An animal life without an animal mind did not induce the heavy, effortless sleep of an animal.

      The spider came about eleven o’clock.

      He didn’t know it was eleven, but there was still the heavy thudding of footsteps overhead, and he knew Lou was usually in bed by midnight.

      He listened to the sluggish rasping of the spider across the box top, down one side, up another, searching with terrible patience for an opening.

      Black widow. Men called it that because the female destroyed and ate the male, if she got the chance, after one mating act.

      Black widow. Shiny black, with the constricted rectangle of scarlet on its egg-shaped abdomen; what was called its hour-glass. A creature with a highly developed nervous system, possessing memory. A creature whose poison was twelve times as deadly as a rattlesnake’s.

      The black widow clambered over the box top under which he was hiding and the spider was almost as big as he. In a few days it would be as big; then, in another few days, bigger. The thought made him sick. How could he escape it then?

      I have to get out of here! he thought desperately.

      His eyes fell shut, his muscles clamping slowly in admission of his helplessness. He’d been trying to get out of the cellar for five weeks now. What chance had he now, when he was one sixth the size he’d been when he had first been trapped there?

      The scratching came again, this time under the cardboard.

      There was a slight tear in one side of the box top; enough to admit one of the spider’s seven legs.

      He lay there shuddering, listening to the spiny leg scratching at the cement like a razor on sandpaper. It never came closer than five inches from the bed, but it gave him nightmares. He clamped his eyes shut.

      Get out of here! he screamed. "Get out of here, get out of here!"

      His voice rang shrilly underneath the cardboard enclosure. It made his eardrums hurt. He lay there trembling violently while the spider scratched and jumped and clambered insanely around the box top, trying to get in.

      Twisting around, he buried his face in the rough wrinkles of the handkerchief covering the sponge. If I could only kill it! his mind screamed in anguish. At least his last days would be peaceful then.

      About an hour later, the scratching stopped and the spider went away. Once more he became conscious of his sweat-dewed flesh, the coldness and the twitching of his fingers. He lay drawing in convulsive breaths through his parted lips, weak from the rigid struggle against horror.

      Kill him? The thought turned his blood to ice.

      A little while later he sank into a troubled, mumbling sleep, and his night was filled with the torment of awful dreams.

      CHAPTER

      FOUR

      His eyes fluttered open.

      Instinct alone told him that the night was over. Beneath the box it was still dark. With an indrawn groan in his chest, he pushed up from the sponge bed and stood gingerly until he shouldered the cardboard surface. Then he edged to one corner and, pushing up hard, slid the box top away from his bed.

      Out in the other world, it was raining. Gray light sifted through the erratic dripping across the panes, converting the shadows into slanting wavers and the patches of light into quiverings of pallid gelatine.

      The first thing he did was climb down the cement block and walk over to the wooden ruler. It was the first thing he did every morning. The ruler stood against the wheels of the huge yellow lawnmower, where he’d put it.

      He pressed himself against its calibrated surface and laid his right hand on top of his head. Then, leaving the hand there, he stepped back and looked.

      Rulers were not divided into sevenths; he had added the markings himself. The heel of his hand obscured the line that told him he was five-sevenths of an inch tall.

      The hand fell, slapping at his side. Why, what did you expect? his mind inquired. He made no reply. He just wondered why he tortured himself like this every day, persisting in this clinical masochism. Surely he didn’t think that it was going to stop now; that the injections would begin working at this last point. Why, then? Was it part of his previous resolution to follow the descent to its very end? If so, it was pointless now. No one else would know of it.

      He walked slowly across the cold cement. Except for the faint tapping, swishing sound of rain on the windows, it was quiet in the cellar. Somewhere far off there was a hollow drumming sound; probably the rain on the cellar doors. He walked on, his gaze moving automatically to the cliff edge, searching for the spider. It was not there.

      He trudged under the jutting feet of the clothes tree and to the twelve-inch step to the floor of the vast, dark cave in which the tank and water pump were. Twelve inches, he thought, lowering himself slowly down the string ladder he’d made and fastened to the brick that stood at the top of the step. Twelve inches, and yet to him it was the equivalent of 150 feet to a normally sized man.

      He let himself down the ladder carefully, his knuckles banging and scraping against the rough concrete. He should have thought of a way to keep the ladder from pressing directly against the wall. Well, it was too late for that now; he was too small. As it was, he could, even with painful stretching, barely reach the sagging rung below, the one below that… the one below that.

      Grimacing, he splashed icy water into his face. He could just about reach the top of the thimble. In two days he would be unable to reach the top of it, probably unable, even, to get down the string ladder. What would he do then?

      Trying not to think of ever-mounting problems, he drank palmfuls of the cold well water; drank until his teeth ached. Then he dried his face and hands on the robe and turned back to the ladder.

      He had to stop and rest halfway up the ladder. He hung there, arms hooked over the rung, which to him was the thickness of rope.

      What if the spider were to appear at the top of the ladder now? What if it were to come clambering down the ladder at him?

      He shuddered. Stop it, he begged his mind. It was bad enough when he actually had to protect himself from the spider without filling the rest of the time with cruel imaginings.

      He swallowed again, fearfully. It was true. His throat hurt.

      Oh, God, he muttered. It was all he needed.

      He climbed up the rest of the way in grim silence, then started on the quarter-mile journey to the refrigerator. Around the hulking coils of the hose, by the tree-thick rake handle, the house-high lawnmower wheels, the wicker table that was half as high as the refrigerator, which was, in turn, as high as a ten-story building. Already hunger was beginning to send out lines of tension in his stomach.

      He stood, head pulled back, looking up at the refrigerator. If there had been clouds floating by its cylinder top, its mountain-peak remoteness could not have been more graphically apparent to him.

      His gaze dropped. He started to sigh, but the sigh was cut off by a twitching grunt. The oil burner again, shaking the floor. He could never get used to it. It had no regular pattern of roaring ignition. What was worse, it seemed to be growing louder every day.

      For what seemed a long time he stood indecisively, staring at the white piano legs of the refrigerator. Then he stirred himself loose from bleak apathy and drew in a quick breath. There was no point in standing there. Either he got to those crackers or he starved.

      He circled the end of the wicker table, planning.

      Like a mountain peak, the top of the refrigerator was attainable by numerous routes, none of them easy. He might try to scale the ladder, which, like the lawn mower, lay against the fuel-oil tank. Reaching the top of the tank (an Everest of achievement in itself), he could move to the huge cardboard boxes piled beside it, then across the wide leather face of Louise’s suitcase, then up the hanging rope to the refrigerator top. Or he could try climbing the red cross-legged table, then jump across to the cartons, move across the suitcase again, and up the rope. Or he could try the wicker table which was right next to the refrigerator, achieve its summit, then climb the long perilous length of the hanging rope.

      He turned away from the refrigerator and looked across the cellar at the cliff wall, the croquet set, the stacked lawn chairs, the gaudily striped beach umbrella, the olive-colored folding canvas stools. He stared at all of them with hopeless eyes.

      Was there no other way? Was there nothing to eat but those crackers?

      His gaze moved slowly along the cliff edge. There was the one dry slice of bread remaining up there; but he knew he couldn’t go after it. Dread of the spider was too strong in him. Even hunger couldn’t drive him up that cliff again.

      He thought suddenly, Were spiders edible? It made his stomach rumble. He forced the thought out of his mind and turned again to face the immediate problem.

      He couldn’t manage the climb unaided, and that was the first hurdle.

      He walked across the floor, feeling the chill of it through his almost worn sandals. Under the shadows of the fuel tank, he climbed between the ragged edges of the split carton side. What if the spider is in there waiting? he thought. He stopped, heartbeat jolting, one leg inside the box, the other leg out. He drew in a deep, courage-stiffening breath. It’s only a spider, he told himself. It’s not a master tactician.

      Climbing the rest of the way into the musty depth of the carton, he wished he could really believe that the spider was not intelligent, but driven only by instinct.

      Reaching for thread, his hand touched icy metal and jerked back. He reached again. It was only a pin. His lips twitched. Only a pin? It was the size of a knight’s lance.

      He found the thread and laboriously unrolled about eight inches of it. It took an entire minute of pulling, jerking, and teeth gnawing to separate it from its barrel-sized spool.

      He dragged the thread out of the carton and back to the wicker table. Then he hiked over to the pile of logs and tore from one of them a piece the size of his arm from elbow to fingertips. This he carried back to the table and fastened to the thread.

      He was ready.

      The first throw was an easy one. Twisting vinelike around the main leg of the table were two narrower strips about the thickness of his body. At a point three inches below the first shelf of the table these two strips flared out from the leg, angling up to the shelf, then turning again and, three inches above the shelf, twining about the main leg again.

      He flung the wood up at the space where one of the strips began jutting out from the leg. On his third attempt the wood sailed through the opening and he pulled it back carefully so that it was wedged between leg and strip. He then climbed up, feet braced on the leg as he ascended, body swung out at the end of the tautened thread.

      Reaching the first point, he hauled up the thread, worked the wooden bar loose, and prepared for the next stage of his climb.

      Another four throws and the wooden bar caught between two strips of latticework shelf. He pulled himself up.

      Stretched out limply on the shelf, he lay there panting. Then, after a few minutes, he sat up and looked down at what to him was a fifty-foot drop. Already he was tired, and the climb had barely started.

      Far across the cellar the pump began its sibilant chugging again, and he listened to it while he looked up at the wide canopy of the tabletop a hundred feet above.

      Come on, he muttered hoarsely to himself then. Come on, come on, come on, come on.

      He got to his feet. Taking a deep breath, he flung the stick up at the next joining place of leg and twining strip.

      He had to leap aside as the throw missed and the wood fell toward him heavily. His right leg slipped into a gap in the latticework and he had to clutch at the crosspieces to keep from plunging to the floor below.

      He hung there for a long moment, one leg dangling in space. Then, groaning, he pulled and pushed himself to a standing position, wincing at the pain in the back muscles of his right leg. He must have sprained it, he thought. He clenched his teeth and hissed out a long breath. Sore throat, sprained leg, hunger, weariness. What next?

      It took twelve muscle-jerking throws of the wooden bar to get it into the proper opening above. Pulling back until the thread grew taut in his grip, he dragged himself up the thirty-five foot space, teeth gritted, breath steaming out between them. He ignored each burning ache of muscle while he climbed; but when he reached the crotch, he wedged himself between the table leg and strip and half lay, half clung there, gasping for air, muscles throbbing visibly. I’ll have to rest, he told himself. Can’t go on. The cellar swam before his eyes.

      ***

      He had gone to visit his mother the week he was five-feet-three. The last time he’d seen her, he’d been six feet tall.

      Dread crawled in him, colder than the winter wind, as he walked up the Brooklyn street toward the two-family brownstone where his mother lived. Two boys were playing ball in the street. One of them missed the other’s throw. The ball bounced toward Scott, and he reached down to pick it up.

      The boy shouted, Throw it here, kid!

      Something like an electric shock jolted through his system. He flung the ball violently.

      The boy shouted, Good throw, kid!

      He walked on, ashen-faced.

      And the terrible hour with his mother. He remembered that.

      The way she kept avoiding the obvious, talking about Marty and Therese and their son, Billy; about Louise and Beth, about the quietly enjoyable life she was able to live on Marty’s monthly checks.

      She had set the table in her impeccable way, each dish and cup in its proper place, each cookie and cake arranged symmetrically. He sat down with her, feeling hollowly sick, the coffee scorching his throat, the cookies tasteless in his mouth.

      Then, finally, when it was too late, she had spoken of it. This thing, she said—he was being treated for it?

      He knew exactly what it was she wanted to hear and he mentioned the Center and the tests. Relief pressed out the extra worry lines in the rose-petal skin of her face. Good, she said, good. The doctors would cure him. The doctors knew everything these days; everything.

      And that was all.

      As he went home, he felt dazedly ill, because of all the reactions she might have shown to his affliction, the one she had shown was the last one in the world he could have imagined.

      Then, when he got home, Louise cornered him in the kitchen, insisting that he go back to the Center to finish the tests. She’d work, they’d put Beth in a nursery. It would work out fine. Her voice was firm in the beginning, obdurate; then it broke and all the withheld terror and unhappiness flooded from her.

      He stood by her side, arm around her back, wanting to comfort her but able only to look up at her face and struggle futilely against the depleted feeling he had at being so much shorter than she. All right, he’d told her, all right, I’ll go back. I will. Don’t cry.

      And the next morning the letter arrived from the Center, telling him that because of the unusual nature of your disorder, the investigation of which might prove of inestimable value to medical knowledge, the doctors were willing to continue the tests free of charge.

      And the return to the Center; he remembered that. And the discovery.

      ***

      Scott blinked his eyes into focus.

      Sighing, he pushed himself to a standing position, one supporting hand holding onto the table leg.

      From that point on, the two twining strips left the leg entirely and flared up at opposing angles, paralleled by bolstering spars until they reached the bottom side of the tabletop. Along each upward sweep, three vertical rods were spaced like giant banisters. He would not need the thread any more.

      He started up the seventy-degree incline, first lurching at the vertical rod and, catching hold of it, pulled himself up to it, sandals slipping and squeaking along the spar. Then he lunged up at the next spar and pulled himself to it. By concentrating on the strenuous effort he was able to blank away all thoughts and sink into a mechanical apathy for many minutes, only the gnawing of hunger tending to remind him of his plight.

      At last, puffing, breath scratching hotly at his throat, he reached the end of the incline and sat there wedged between the spar and the last vertical rod, staring at the wide overhang of the tabletop.

      His face tightened.

      No. The mutter was crusty, dry sounding as his pain-smitten eyes looked around. There was a three-foot jump to the bottom edge of the tabletop. But there was no handhold there.

      No!

      Had he come all this way for nothing? He couldn’t believe it, wouldn’t let himself believe it. His eyes fell shut. I’ll push myself off, he thought. I’ll let myself fall to the floor. This is too much.

      He opened his eyes again, the small bones under his cheeks moving as he ground his teeth together. He wasn’t going to push himself off anything. If he fell, it would be in jumping for the edge of the tabletop. He wasn’t going down on his own volition under any circumstances.

      He clambered along the top of the horizontal spar just below the tabletop, searching. There had to be a way. There had to be.

      Turning the corner of the spar, he saw it.

      Running along the under edge of the tabletop was a strip of wood about double the thickness of his arm. It was fastened to the tabletop with nails a trifle shorter than he was.

      Two of these nails had pulled out, and at that point the strip sagged about a quarter of an inch below the tabletop edge. A quarter of an inch—almost three feet to him. If he could jump to that gap he could catch hold of the strip and have a chance to pull himself up to the top of the table.

      He perched there, breathing deeply, staring at the sagging strip and at the space he’d have to jump. It was at least four feet to him. Four feet of empty space.

      He licked his dry lips. Outside, the rain was falling harder; he heard its heavy splattering at the windowpanes. Swirls of graying light swam on his face. He looked across the quarter-mile that separated him from the window over the log pile. The way the rain water ran twistingly over the glass panes made it appear as if great, hollow eyes were watching him.

      He turned away from that. There was no use in standing here. He had to eat. Going back down was out of the question. He had to go on.

      He braced himself for the leap. It may be now, he thought, strangely unalarmed. This may be the end of my long, fantastic journey.

      His lips pressed together. So be it, he whispered then, and sprang out into space.

      His arms banged so hard on the wooden bar that they were almost numbed beyond the ability to hold. I’m falling! his mind screamed. Then his arms wrapped themselves around the wood and he hung there gasping, legs swinging back and forth over the tremendous void.

      He dangled there for a long moment, catching his breath, letting feeling return to his arms. Then, carefully, with agonizing slowness, he turned himself around on the bar so that he faced the spar arrangement. That done, he dragged himself up to a sitting position on the bar, holding on overhead for support. He sat there, limbs palsied with exhaustion.

      The last step to the tabletop was the hardest.

      He’d have to stand up on the smooth, circular top of the bar and, lurching up, throw his arms over the end of the tabletop. As far as he knew, there would be nothing there to hang onto. It would be entirely a matter of pressing his arms and hands so tightly to the surface that friction would hold him there.

      Then he’d have to climb over the edge.

      For a moment the entire grotesque spectacle of it swept over him forcibly—the insanity of a world where he could be killed trying to climb to the top of a table that any normal man could lift and carry with one hand.

      He let it go. Forget it, he ordered himself.

      He drew in long breaths until the shaking of his arm and leg muscles slackened. Then slowly he eased himself up to a crouch on the smooth wood, balancing himself by holding onto the bottom edge of the tabletop.

      The bottoms of his sandals were too smooth. He couldn’t grip the wood well enough. As cold as it was, he’d have to take them off. Gingerly he shook them off one at a time and, after a moment, heard the faint slap as they struck the floor below.

      He wavered for a moment, steadied himself, then drew in a long, chest-filling breath. He paused.

      Now.

      He lunged up into empty air and slapped his arms across the end of the tabletop. A broad vista of huge, piled-up objects met his eyes. Then he began slipping, and he clutched at the wood, digging his nails into it. He kept sliding toward the edge, his body moving into space, dragging him.

      No, he whimpered in a strangled voice.

      He managed to lurch forward again, fingertips scraping at the wood surface, arms pressing down tightly, desperately.

      He saw the curving metal rod.

      It was hanging a quarter of an inch from his fingers. He had to reach it or he’d fall. Leaving one hand down, splinters gouging under its nails, he raised the other hand toward the rod.

      Look out!

      His raised hand slapped down again and clawed frantically at the wood. He began slipping back again.

      With a last, frenzied lunge, he grabbed for the curving rod and his hands clamped over its icy thickness.

      He dragged himself, kicking and struggling, over the edge of the tabletop. Then his hands dropped from the metal—which was the hanging handle of a paint can—and he collapsed heavily on his chest and stomach.

      He lay there for a long time, unable to move, shaking with the remains of dread and exertion, sucking in lungfuls of the cold air. I made it, he thought. It was all he could think. I made it, I made it!

      As exhausted as he was, it gave him a warming pride to think it.

      CHAPTER

      FIVE

      After a while he got up shakily and looked around.

      The tabletop’s expanse was littered with massive paint cans, bottles and jars. Scott walked along their mammoth shapes, stepping over the jagged-toothed edge of a saw blade and racing across its icy surface to the tabletop again.

      Orange paint. He strode past the luridly streaked can, the top of his head barely as high as the bottom edge of the can’s label. He remembered painting the lawn chairs during one of the many hours he’d spent in the cellar before his last, irrevocable snow-caked plunge into it.

      Head back, he gazed up at an orange-spotted brush handle sticking out of an elephantine jar. One day—not so long ago—he’d held that handle in his fingers. Now it was ten times as long as he was; a huge, knife-pointed length of glossy yellow wood.

      There was a loud clicking noise and then the ocean-like roar of the oil burner filled the air again. His heartbeat raced, then slowed once more. No, he’d never get used to its thundering suddenness. Well, there’d be only four more days of it, anyway, he thought.

      His feet were getting cold; there was no time to waste. Between the barren hulks of paint cans he walked until he’d reached the body-thick rope that hung down in twisted loops from the top of the refrigerator.

      A stroke of fortune. He found a crumpled pink rag lying next to a towering brown bottle of turpentine. Impulsively he drew part of it around himself, tucked it under his feet, then sank back into the rest of its wrinkled softness. The cloth reeked of paint and turpentine, but that didn’t matter. The held-in warmth of his body began surrounding him comfortingly.

      Reclining there, he squinted up at the distant refrigerator top. There was still the equivalent of a seventy-five foot climb to make, and without footholds except for those he could manage to find on the rope itself. He would, virtually, have to pull himself all the way up.

      His eyes closed and he lay there for a while, breathing slowly, his body as relaxed as possible. If the hunger pangs had not been so severe, he might have gone to sleep. But hunger was a wavelike pressure at his stomach walls, causing it to rumble emptily. He wondered if it could possibly be as empty as it felt.

      When he discovered himself beginning to dwell on thoughts of food—of gravy-dripping roasts and broiled steaks inundated with brown-edged mushrooms and onions—he knew it was time to get up. With a last wiggle of his warmed toes, he threw off the smooth covering and stood.

      That was when he recognized the cloth.

      It was part of Louise’s slip, an old one that she’d torn up and thrown into the rag box. He picked up a corner of it and fingered its softness, a strange, yearning pain in his chest and stomach that was not hunger.

      Lou. He whispered it, staring at the cloth that had once rested against her warm, fragrant flesh.

      Angrily he flung away the cloth edge, his face a hardened mask. He kicked at it.

      Shaken, he turned from the cloth, walked stiffly to the edge of the table, and grabbed hold of the rope. It was too thick to get his hands around; he’d have to use his arms. Luckily, it was hanging in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1