“I screamed?”
“Loudly.”
I got on the train and walked back to my compartment, still trembling. I checked my door and saw that my lock had been thrown from the outside, but it was faulty, and all it took was a little shaking to have it come free of the door frame. That’s how I had got out of my room.
The train man brought me a nip of whisky, and I told him about the lock, and drank the whisky. “I’ll have the lock fixed right away, sir. Best not to mention all this,” he said. “No one will believe it, and it could cause problems with the cross-country line. People have to get places, you know.”
I nodded.
“Goodnight, sir. Pleasant dreams.”
This was such an odd invocation to all that had happened, I almost laughed.
He went away, closing up my compartment, and I looked out the window. All there was to see was the grass, waving in the wind, tipped with moonlight.
The train started to move, and pretty soon we were on our way. And that was the end of the matter, and this is the first time I have mentioned it since it happened so long ago. But, I assure you. It happened just the way I told you, crossing the Western void, in the year of 1901.
ALL THROUGH THE HOUSE
Joachim Heijndermans
“Billy!” whispered Leah. “Billy! Wake up!”
“What?” groaned Billy. Though he hadn’t yet learned how to read the time, little Billy could tell it was late in the night by looking out the window. The sky was an inky black, with only the light fluttering of snow passing by the window to break the dark monotony.
“Do you hear that?” Leah asked.
Before Billy could even ask what she was talking about, a thumping sound from downstairs chased away any sleep he still had. He looked his older sister in the eye, both of them silently agreeing that the sound could be only one thing. Santa was here.
Without saying another word, Billy and Leah slipped their feet into their slippers and slowly left their bedroom. They walked carefully, so the floorboards would not creak. With a gentle pace, they crawled down the staircase. Leah halted before she reached the bottom and crouched down, peering between the wooden bars of the bannister. Billy expected to see a large smile plastered on her face, delighted by the sight of the jolly old elf eating the cookies they had laid on a plate before they’d gone off to bed.
But there was no smile. There was nothing. Leah stared blankly into the living room, her mouth opened slightly. When Billy caught up with her and looked for himself, his blood turned to ice.
There, in front of the Christmas tree, carefully holding an ornament between two elongated claws, stood a thin skeletal being. Its bright red skin hung loosely from its thin and brittle-looking frame. A small turtle-like head on top of its long, thin neck moved from side to side, mesmerized by the glass figurine. It was a little Mickey Mouse, dressed in a Santa suit and crossing off names from a list with a long feather quill. It held the mouse to its face and opened its two large nostrils, which up until that moment had not been there. It could shut them as tightly as the children could shut their eyes, something which the creature seemed to be incapable of. Large yellow eyes took up the majority of its face, but not once did the creature blink.
Having grown bored with the ornament, the thin specter gently hung it back on its designated branch on the pine tree, then turned to other matters. Its large eyes had fallen on the plate of cookies and the glass of milk. With its two-fingered hand, it lifted the glass then opened its maw. A large prehensile tongue shot out into the glass. Within seconds, the milk vanished from its container, leaving behind a puff of steam, as if it had boiled off in an instant. The cookies met a similar fate when the figure took the plate and placed it in its mouth. When it pulled the plate back out, all the cookies had vanished. Not even the smallest crumb was left behind.
Then, to Billy’s horror, Leah gasped. It was the lightest of gasps, one that only the most alert of adults would have picked up, or perhaps a guard dog. And even then, they wouldn’t have thought much of it. But the red creature heard, and jerked its head toward them. With wide, serpentine eyes, it regarded the two small children huddled at the bottom of the staircase.
It began to crawl toward them, walking on its knuckles as it tried to place its long, bent legs in ways that would not knock any of the furniture over. Billy wanted to run to his room and hide, but he couldn’t move. Leah sat there, just as frozen as he was, her lip quivering as the red-skinned creature approached them. Then, it stopped, looming over the two with an arched back. Billy could count the ribs in its chest and the vertebrae protruding from its neck. He believed he would cry, but looking into those yellow eyes was oddly soothing. It turned to Leah.
“Lee…ah…,” it groaned in a hoarse voice. “Gut.”
The creature tilted its head back. It began to make a hacking sound. How-how-how it went, like a cat expelling a hairball. Its throat expanded as a large ball was pushed up, while snow-white tears streamed from its eyes. Then, without warning, it spat up a box wrapped in gold and silver wrapping paper. The phlegm that clung to it evaporated within seconds. Then, it turned to face Billy.
“Whhilll…jem…” it groaned. “Gut.”
The two children watched with astonishment as the creature repeated the process, this time expelling a large thin box and a set of three smaller boxes from its mouth. Once finished, the creature panted heavily to catch its breath. It reached out its hands and placed it on both brother and sister’s heads, brushing its thin talons through their hair.
“Staaai…gut,” it muttered before crawling on all fours to the chimney and climbing up into it. The moment it vanished, the fire, which had died long before the children’s bedtime, reignited. They could hear the faint sound of bells, gently fading away into the cold December night.
Billy felt that he could move again. While still reeling over what they had just witnessed, his curiosity compelled him to step out and unwrap the boxes the creature had spit out. He made quick work of the wrapping paper and beamed with delight when he saw the Silverado train set that he’d wanted for weeks now. The three smaller boxes contained an additional car each. Leah, on the other hand, found that her box contained the Little Suzy doll that she had asked from Santa.
Both children took their new toys up to their shared bedroom and laid in bed with them. Though neither of them could find their sleep. For both children wondered the same thing as they clung tightly to their gifts.
What if they had not been ‘gut’?
LIFE HUTCH
Harlan Ellison
Terrence slid his right hand, the one out of sight of the robot, up his side. The razoring pain of the three broken ribs caused his eyes to widen momentarily in pain. Then he recovered himself and closed them till he was studying the machine through narrow slits.
If the eyeballs click, I’m dead, thought Terrence.
The intricate murmurings of the life hutch around him brought back the immediacy of his situation. His eyes again fastened on the medicine cabinet clamped to the wall next to the robot’s duty-niche.
Cliché. So near yet so far. It could be all the way back on Antares-Base for all the good it’s doing me, he thought, and a crazy laugh rang through his head. He caught himself just in time. Easy! Three days is a nightmare, but cracking up will only make it end sooner. That was the last thing he wanted. But it couldn’t go on much longer.