The Oklahoma man listened. From under the linoleum, sounding about six feet or so down, muffled, came a man’s sorrowful talking. Not a word came through clearly, just a sort of sad mourning.
The Oklahoma man sat up in bed. Feeling his movement, Leota hissed, “You heard, you heard?” excitedly. The Oklahoma man put his feet on the cold linoleum. The voice below changed into a falsetto. Leota began to sob. “Shut up, so I can hear,” demanded her husband, angrily. Then, in the heart-beating quiet, he bent his ear to the floor and Leota cried, “Don’t tip over the flowers!” and he cried, “Shut up!” and again listened, tensed. Then he spat out an oath and rolled back under the covers. “It’s only the man downstairs,” he muttered.
“That’s what I mean. Mr. White!”
“No, not Mr. White. We’re on the second floor of an apartment house, and we got neighbors down under. Listen.” The falsetto downstairs talked. “That’s the man’s wife. She’s probably telling him not to look at another man’s wife! Both of them probably drunk.”
“You’re lying!” insisted Leota. “Acting brave when you’re really trembling fit to shake the bed down. It’s a haunt, I tell you, and he’s talking in voices, like Gran’ma Hanlon used to do, rising up in her church pew and making queer tongues all mixed, like a black man, an Irishman, two women, and tree frogs, caught in her crawl That dead man, Mr. White, hates us for moving in with him tonight, I tell you! Listen!”
As tf to back her up, the voices downstairs talked louder. The Oklahoma man lay on his elbows, shaking his head hopelessly, wanting to laugh, but too tired.
Something crashed.
“He’s stirring in his coffin!” shrieked Leota. “He’s mad! We got to move outa here, Walter, or well be found dead tomorrow!”
More crashes, more bangs, more voices. Then, silence. Followed by a movement of feet in the air over their heads.
Leota whimpered. “He’s free of his tomb! Forced his way out and he’s tramping the air over our heads!”
By this time, the Oklahoma man had his clothing on. Beside the bed, he put on his boots. “This building’s three floors high,” he said, tucking in his shirt “We got neighbors overhead who just come home.” To Leota’s weeping he had this to say, “Come on. I’m taking you upstairs to meet them people. That’ll prove who they are. Then we’ll walk downstairs to the first floor and talk to that drunkard and his wife. Get up, Leota.”
Someone knocked on the door.
Leota squealed and rolled over and over, making a quilted mummy of herself. “He’s in his tomb again, rapping to get out!”
The Oklahoma man switched on the lights and unlocked the door. A very jubilant little man in a dark suit, with wild blue eyes, wrinkles, gray hair, and thick glasses danced in.
“Sorry, sorry,” declared the little man. “I’m Mr. Whetmore. I went away. Now I’m back. I’ve had the most astonishing stroke of luck. Yes, I have. Is my tombstone still here?” He looked at the stone a moment before he saw it “Ah, yes, yes, it is! Oh, hello.” He saw Leota peering from many layers of blanket. “I’ve some men with a roller-truck, and, if you don’t mind, well move the tombstone out of here, this very moment. It’ll only take a minute.”
The husband laughed with gratitude. “Glad to get rid of the damned thing. Wheel her out!”
Mr. Whetmore directed two brawny workmen into the room. He was almost breathless with anticipation. “The most amazing thing. This morning I was lost, beaten, dejected—but a miracle happened.” The tombstone was loaded onto a small coaster truck. “Just an hour ago, I heard, by chance, of a Mr. White who had just died of pneumonia. A Mr. White, mind you, who spells his name with an I instead of a Y. I have just contacted his wife, and she is delighted that the stone is all prepared. And Mr. White not cold more than sixty minutes, and spelling his name with an I, just think of it. Oh, I’m so happy!”
The tombstone, on its truck, rolled from the room, while Mr. Whetmore and the Oklahoma man laughed, shook hands, and Leota watched with suspicion as the commotion came to an end. “Well, that’s now all over,” grinned her husband as he closed the door on Mr. Whetmore, and began throwing the canned flowers into the sink and dropping the tin cans into a waste-basket. In the dark, he climbed into bed again, oblivious to her deep and solemn silence. She said not a word for a long while, but just lay there, alone-feeling. She felt him adjust the blankets with a sigh. “Now we can sleep. The damn old thing’s took away. It’s only ten thirty. Plenty of time for sleep.” How he enjoyed spoiling her fun.
Leota was about to speak when a rapping came from down below again. “There! There!” she Cried, triumphantly, holding her husband. “There it is again, the noises, like I said. Hear them!”
Her husband knotted his fists and clenched his teeth. “How many times must I explain. Do I have to kick you in the head to make you understand, woman! Let me alone. There’s nothing—”’
“Listen, listen, oh, listen,” she begged in a whisper.
They listened in the square darkness.
A rapping on a door came from downstairs.
A door opened. Muffled and distant and faint, a woman’s voice said, sadly, “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Whetmore.”
And deep down in the darkness underneath the suddenly shivering bed of Leota and her Oklahoma husband, Mr. Whetmore’s voice replied: “Good evening again, Mrs. White. Here. I brought the stone.”
The Thing at the Top of the Stairs
He was between trains.
He had got off in Chicago only to find that there was a four-hour waitover.
He thought about heading for the museum; the Renoirs and Monets had always held his eyes and touched his mind. But he was restless. The taxicab line outside the station made him blink.
Why not? he thought, grab a cab and taxi thirty miles north, spend an hour in his old hometown, then bid it farewell for the second time in his life, and ease back south to train out for New York, happier and perhaps wiser?