Lansing rocked himself and smiled, lingering on the sweet moment of impact, thinking of how he had glided silently away in the confusion after making sure to look down for a glimpse of the crushed body.
The papers had said that if she had fallen a few inches to the right she would have landed on the outside of the tracks and that her foot might still have been severed but that she would have survived. As it was, she landed directly under the train between the tracks, and her right foot had been cut off by the wheels, but her body had been dragged and crushed by the momentum of the front car screeching to a halt.
The papers had quieted down some about it in the past week, moving the stories and wild speculations to the inside pages, and though he had slept undisturbed for the first few days after the deed—working a full day just as he always did—he had begun to have bad dreams. He dreamed about the foot. He dreamed that the foot was following him. And what horrified him most in the dreams was the way it followed him, walking. Like some horrible cartoon appendage—like the way his mother used to walk her hand around him with little doll’s shoes on two fingers when he was small, dancing those two little feet before him like a little soldier after he was bad and then suddenly lashing out when he wasn’t expecting it, smacking him across the face with the flat part of her hand. She was doing it now, hitting him, smacking him—
He awoke, suddenly realizing that he had dozed off into the dream again. He was covered with cold sweat, and the room was dark now. He made a move to get off the bed and turn on the lights.
As he did so he heard a sound. He knew he was wide awake now, and he heard something moving around in the closet. Something walking around, pushing things aside, kicking things aside.
He thought, It has to be rats.
He pulled himself unsteadily from the bed, wiping the sweat from his face with the front of his tee-shirt, and lurched over to the light switch. He clicked it on and the sounds from the closet abruptly stopped. He threw open the closet door and there was nothing there. No rats. Nothing.
He slammed the door roughly shut and went to the bed, settling onto the old, creaking mattress. He took a deep breath. I’ve got to stop this, he thought. He was starting to be afraid to go out, of taking the subway, of doing anything.
This has got to stop.
He thought again of tripping the girl, saw her falling off the platform, and that made him feel better. He looked at the clippings pasted to the wall around the room—YOUNG DANCER CRUSHED—and was even able to smile. I got away with it, he thought. No one knows I did it.
He lay down and slept.
And dreamt, screaming, of the foot again.
~ * ~
The next day he arrived at work late. Walking by a shoe store something made him hesitate; there was a pair of dancer’s shoes, ballet slippers, in the window, and he found himself staring at them. As he looked they suddenly began to move—
He realized with a start of relief that it was just the shop owner, taking the pair of shoes off their hook to show a customer. But the image of the moving shoes lingered in his mind…
He didn’t say hello to Joey, the lobby attendant, like he usually did, but went straight to the locker room and put his maintenance man’s uniform on. Joey mumbled something as he went past, something like “Grouch,” with a laugh, but Lansing let it pass.
Morelli was waiting for him on the 15th floor, and yelled at him good-naturedly when he came off the elevator, for being late.
“Look at this, kid,” Morelli said suddenly, turning and holding up his right leg. “Look what I did shaving this morning.” There was a stump on the end, no foot—and then Morelli laughed and popped his shoe out of the pulled-down pants cuff.
“Got you that time, kid,” he said, and laughed again. “Go clean up that mess on 18, the workmen’ll be in early tomorrow to start. You okay, kiddo?”
“Uh, yeah, Nick.” Lansing nodded curtly and left.
The eighteenth floor was completely gutted for renovation, and he went there gratefully, happy to be alone. But soon the emptiness of the floor and the strange shadows cast by the boxes and crates lying around began to get to him. He heard noises, and imagined a dancing foot, a legion of dancing feet, kicking things around, marching right up to him—
He swung around as the elevator door suddenly opened. Nobody got off. After a moment the doors closed again, and the arrival light over the opening went out. There was dusty silence for a moment, and then as Lansing turned to get back to work something moved.
He distinctly saw it, a severed foot scooting around a crate by the elevator, and out of sight. He began to shake and his body went numb, as if two giant icy hands had grabbed him. There was a scratching sound, and then the sound of a moving ballet slipper.
Lansing went rigid. The shuffling got louder, and then he saw a foot with a slipper on it appear from behind the crate.
Suddenly the elevator doors opened again, and the foot ran behind a box. Morelli stepped out into the room.
“Hey kid,” he said, and then he saw Lansing standing frozen. “What’s wrong?”
“The foot!” Lansing said.
“What?”
“Don’t you hear the dancing?” He felt as if he would faint.
“Kid, go home early. Right now. Whatever’s wrong, flush it out and come back tomorrow ready to work. I don’t want a sick guy on the job, makes me look like a lousy foreman. Believe me, you don’t look so good.”
“I—” He nodded. “Okay.”
He got in the most crowded subway car on the train and looked straight ahead all the way home. He was afraid that if he looked down he would see the foot in front of him. He thought he heard the rap-shuffle of it walking, but he refused to look. There was a light kick at the cuff of his pants just before his stop, but still he gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead.
He ran to his apartment and bolted the door, stuffing towels underneath the sill. He heard tiny footsteps outside. He slammed the windows shut, and double-locked the window leading to the fire escape, pulling down the shade. He sat on the bed in the corner of the room and pulled up his knees, closing his eyes tight.
There was the squeak-shuffle sound of a ballet slipper dancing.
He went to the window, sweating, and peeked out under the shade. An old man had set his hat on the ground in front of the building, and was doing a soft shoe dance.
Lansing yanked up the window and screamed at the old man, who quickly moved off. He pulled the window back down and went back to the bed.
Shutting his eyes, he tried to think of the girl and the train. But only the image of his mother came to him, dancing her hand in front of him, waiting for his baby smile, then the fist—
Something was kicking around in the closet, and then the closet door opened.
The foot was in the room. Lansing opened his eyes and saw it skitter under the bed. It began to kick things around, moving shoes around, jumping up and kicking at the bottom of the mattress.
He screamed and stood quickly up as the foot leaped onto the bed. It disappeared under the covers; Lansing could see it moving around underneath them.
He pulled frantically at the bolts on the door, missing and then finally unlocking them. He threw open the door. He heard the rumple of bedclothes behind him, as the foot kicked the covers aside to follow him. He ran down into the street and toward the subway. Looking back once over his shoulder, he saw the foot walking leisurely, keeping up with him about a half a block behind.