“Bill!” his wife whispered. “What is it? Are they after you?”
“No, Liz – at least, it ain’t the cops. But something is.”
He pointed to a mark close inside the door. At first she thought it was his own wet footprint.
“Get a wet cloth, Liz, and clean up the front step and the passage before anyone sees it,” he said.
She hesitated, puzzled.
“For God’s sake, do it quick, Liz,” he urged her.
Still half bewildered, she went through the dark passage and opened the door. The rain was pelting down, seeming to bounce up from the road as it hit. The gutters were running like torrents. Everything streamed with wetness save the doorstep protected by the small jutting porch. And on the step was the blood-red print of a naked foot ...
In a kind of trance she went down on her knees and swabbed it clean with the wet cloth. Closing the door, she switched on the lights and saw the prints leading towards the kitchen. When she had cleaned them up, she went back to her husband.
“You been hit, Bill?”
He looked at her, elbows on the table, his head supported between his hands.
“No,” he said. “It ain’t me what’s making them marks, Liz – it’s what’s followin’ me.”
“Following you? You mean they been following you all the way from the job?” she said incredulously. “How did you get back?”
Smudger explained. His immediate anxiety, after pitching Spotty into the canal, had been to rid himself of the car. It had been a pinch for the job, and the number and description would have been circulated. He had parked it in a quiet spot and got out to walk, maybe pick up a lift. When he had gone a few yards he had looked back and seen the line of prints behind him. They had frightened him a good deal more than he now admitted. Until that moment he had assumed that since they had been following Spotty they would have followed him into the canal. Now, it seemed, they had transferred their attentions to himself. He tried a few more steps: they followed. With a great effort he got a grip on himself, and refrained from running. He perceived that unless he wanted to leave a clear trail he must go back to the car. He did.
Farther on he tried again, and with a sinking, hopeless feeling observed the same result. Back in the car, he lit a cigarette and considered plans with as much calmness as he could collect.
The thing to do was to find something that would not show tracks – or would not hold them. A flash of inspiration came to him, and he headed the car towards the river.
The sky was barely grey yet. He fancied that he managed to get the car down to the towpath without being seen. At any rate, no one had hailed him as he cut through the long grass to the water’s edge. From there he had made his way downstream, plodding along through a few inches of water until he found a rowboat. It was a venerable and decrepit affair, but it served his purpose.
From then on his journey had been unexciting, but also uncomfortable. During the day he had become extremely hungry, but he did not dare to leave the boat until after dark, and then he moved only in the darkest streets where the marks might not be seen. Both that day and the next two he had spent hoping for rain. This morning, in a drenching downpour that looked like it might continue for hours, he had sunk the boat and made his way home, trusting that the trail would be washed away. As far as he knew, it had been.
Liz was less impressed than she ought to have been.
“I reckon it must be something on your boots,” she said practically. “Why didn’t you buy some new ones?”
He looked at her with a dull resentment. “It ain’t nothing on my boots,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you it was following me? You seen the marks. How could they come off my boots? Use your head.”
“But it don’t make sense. Not the way you say it. What’s following you?”
“How do I know,” he said bitterly. “All I know is that it makes them marks – and they’re getting closer, too.”
“How do you mean closer?”
“Just what I say. The first day they was about five feet behind me. Now they’re between three and four.”
It was not the kind of thing that Liz could take in too easily.
“It don’t make sense,” she repeated.
It made no sense during the days that followed, but she ceased to doubt. Smudger stayed in the house; whatever was following stayed with him. The marks of it were everywhere: on the stairs, upstairs, downstairs. Half Liz’s time was spent in cleaning them up lest someone should come in and see them. They got on her nerves. But not as badly as they got on Smudger’s ...
Even Liz could not deny that the feet were stepping a little more closely behind him – a little more closely each day.
“And what happens when they catch up?” Smudger demanded fearfully. “Tell me what. What the hell can I do?”
But Liz had no suggestions. Nor was there anyone else they dared ask about it.
Smudger began to dream nights. He’d whimper and she’d wake him up asking what was the matter. The first time he could not remember, but the dream was repeated, growing a little clearer with each recurrence. A black shape appeared to hang over him as he lay. It was vaguely manlike in form, but it hovered in the air as if suspended. Gradually it sank lower and lower until it rested upon him – but weightlessly, like a pattern of fog. It seemed to flow up towards his head, and he was in panic lest it should cover his face and smother him, but at his throat it stopped. There was a prickling at the side of his neck. He felt strangely weak, as though tiredness suddenly invaded him. At the same time, the shadow appeared to grow denser. He could feel, too, that there began to be some weight in it as it lay upon them. Then, mercifully, Liz would wake him.
So real was the sensation that he inspected his neck carefully in the mirror when he shaved. But there was no mark there.
Gradually the glistening red prints closed in behind him. A foot behind his heels, six inches, three inches ...
Then came a morning when he awoke tired and listless. He had to force himself to get up, and when he looked in the mirror, there was a mark on his throat. He called Liz, in a panic. But it was only a very small mark, and she made nothing of it.
But the next morning his lassitude was greater. It needed all his willpower to drag himself up. The pallor of his face shocked Liz – and himself, too, when he saw it in the shaving mirror. The red mark on his neck stood out more vividly ...
The next day he did not get up.
Two days later Liz became frightened enough to call in the doctor. It was a confession of desperation. Neither of them cared for the doctor, who knew or guessed uncomfortably much about the occupations of his patients. One called a doctor for remedies, not for homilies on one’s way of life.
He came, he hummed, he ha’ed. He prescribed a tonic, and had a talk with Liz.
“He’s seriously anaemic,” he said. “But there’s more to it than that. Something on his mind.” He looked at her. “Have you any idea what it is?”
Liz’s denial was unconvincing. He did not even pretend to believe it.
“I’m no magician,” he said. “If you don’t help me, I can’t help him. Some kinds of worry can go on pressing and nagging like an abscess.”
Liz continued to deny. For a moment she had been tempted to tell about the footmarks, but caution warned her that once she began she would likely be trapped into saying more than was healthy.
“Think it over,” the doctor advised. “And let me know tomorrow how he is.”
The next morning there was no doubt that Smudger was doing very badly. The tonic had done him no good at all. He lay in bed with his eyes, when they were open, looking unnaturally large in a drawn white face. He was so weak that she had to feed him with a spoon. He was frightened, too, that he was going to die. So was Liz. The alarm in her voice when she telephoned the doctor was unmistakably genuine.