He heard the soft shoe again. It was the old man; he had set his hat down by the subway entrance, and was dancing. Lansing ran past him, kicking the hat as he did so; the old man stopped his dance and yelled after him.
Desperate, Lansing jumped the turnstile, and turned back to see the foot running underneath it. He began to scream, and the startled crowd moved aside in a swath to let him pass. A transit cop, seeing him, began to follow.
He ran down the stairs two at a time to the lower level, and along the platform of the express track. The foot was behind him. There was a roaring in his ears; he looked back to see the transit cop in the distance, an express train coming in, and the foot a few feet behind him, taking great springing jumps into the air. He tried to duck as the foot leaped onto his back, kicking him over the edge of the platform onto the tracks in front of the train. He landed on his back between the two tracks. Wild with terror, he looked over to see the foot stamping at him, and with a convulsive effort he rolled over the track to his right to safety as the train screeched toward him. But then, he realized with horror, the foot was stepping on his left leg, holding it down over the track, pressing it down as the train passed.
There was the shriek of steel on steel and then blackness.
~ * ~
He awoke in the hospital to the sound of Morelli’s voice. The foreman was hovering over him.
“Thank God, he’s coming around,” Morelli said. “Hey kid, how you feel?”
“I…okay, I guess,” he replied. He tried to push himself up to a sitting position and discovered that there was nothing to push with on his left leg but a stump.
Morelli moved quickly to help him sit up. “Hey kid,” he said, obvious concern in his voice, “I’m really sorry about what happened. I keep thinking about fooling you that day with my pants leg pulled down over my shoe and it makes me shiver. That didn’t freak you out, did it?”
“No. No, I’ll be all right,” he said. “You were just kidding around. That had nothing to do with it.”
Morelli looked relieved. “That’s great. I was really worried about it. You know, you were really lucky, kid. There was a cop right there when it happened, he said if you hadn’t moved at the last second you’d have been cut in half or mashed to a pulp. In fact, they might have been able to do something with your foot if…”
Lansing immediately became alert with fear. “What happened to my foot?”
“They…well, they couldn’t find it. It’s really weird.”
Lansing said nothing; and then suddenly the vision of his apartment left open, with the clippings of the girl, sprang to his mind. “What happened to my apartment? I left it open—”
“Don’t worry about it, kid. I locked it up for you. It was dark when I went over so I just shut the door. And don’t worry about your job, either, I’ll see you get it back when you get rehabilitated. There’s no reason why you can’t come back to work with…the way you are.”
Lansing’s mind was racing. “Thanks, Nick. I mean it. I…think I’d better rest now.”
“Sure, kid,” said Morelli. “I’ll come back to see you tomorrow.”
In the quiet of his room a sudden peace came over Lansing. It was incredible how it all fit so neatly together. He almost shivered with pleasure. He had killed the girl, and she had gotten her revenge; she was dead and he was alive. She had taken his foot, but he could live without it; he would learn to work and do everything else with it. And he would always have that secret knowledge of what he had done and that he had survived it. He began to smile to himself and drew his knees up, resting gently on the stump of his left leg, rocking slowly. I’ve beaten them, he thought, and even the image of his mother’s fingers dancing before him didn’t bother him now.
And then he heard the shuffling.
It was very faint at first, very far away, as if it were way down the corridor or outside his window on the street below, but it began to grow in volume. A cold shiver went through him, but then he suddenly remembered the dancing old man outside the subway station, only a few blocks away. He gradually relaxed. It must be someone like that—maybe even the same old man—shuffling up and down the halls of the hospital serenading the patients. He thought of how foolish he’d been before, letting it all get to him. It was not bad sounding, although it needed a little work on coordination. It got louder; obviously the dancer was working his way down the corridor and would reach his door in turn. He settled back against the pillows and thought of looking through his trouser pockets for loose change so that he could give it to the old man. He began to get a little drowsy.
The sound was very loud now; the dancer had reached his closed door and was tapping a beautiful, slow waltz. A smile came to Lansing’s lips.
“Come in, old man,” he called as the door inched open; he would now be able to see who was dancing so he could compliment him. The door opened all the way as the waltz ended.
There was no one there.
There was a squeak-shuffle and Lansing began to scream hysterically as two severed feet came into the room. They stopped before his bed and began to dance again, a fast-paced tap dance this time. Lansing screamed and screamed but no one came to help him. One foot, a graceful, feminine one, was covered with a ballet slipper and was doing most of the work, while the other, the foot of a man in a workman’s boot, seemed to be getting better as it followed the other’s example.
The dance ended, and after a short interlude for applause, another began.
Lansing, screaming and screaming, knew that the dance, the beautiful unending dance, would always be for him.
LIBERTY
By Al Sarrantonio
There’s a story they tell in Baker’s Flats that tells you everything you need to know about the town. It seems there was a Swede named Bergeson who moved in without permission from the town elders. He came from out East, and he was a little naïve because he assumed that since this was the United States, and that he was now a United States citizen, that he could go anywhere and do whatever he liked. Seems he believed all that business they fed him in Europe about this being the land of True Freedom and Golden Opportunity, and like any other poor fool who isn’t getting what he wants where he is, he packed up and got on a ship that sailed through the cold waters and came to America.
This was 1885, the year those Frenchmen were putting up that Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. I know because I was helping them do it, working for five cents a day and drinking four cents of it at McSorley’s. I like to think that this Swede, Bergeson, got a good look at it half finished, because that’s just about where Liberty stands in this country.
Anyway, to make a long story shorter, because I’ve got other things to tell, they found this Swede staked out on his land in the sun, naked, blue eyes wide with surprise more than fright, because he was a big man and wouldn’t have gone down without a fight. They found his legal deed to the land he owned stuffed in his mouth, and a circle of bullet holes outlining his chest where his heart had beat. There were seven holes, just as there are seven elders of the town of Baker’s Flats, and the story they tell is that these town elders went and killed the Swede Bergeson and made a solemn oath doing it, a pact if you will, that they would take it to their deaths and conspire against anyone who conspired against them.
That’s the story they tell, and I know the story because I came out West with the Swede, running from the law and the half-finished liberty that statue represented, looking for my own freedom, and eventually, unlike the poor Swede, finding it, which constitutes the rest of my story.