Killer, Come Back to Me

Whispering.

He took a blind step forward.

The cuff of his pants leg quivered as he reached the floor grille of the ventilator. A hot rise of air followed his cuffs. Whispering.

The furnace.

* * *

He was on his way downstairs when someone knocked on the front door. He leaned against it. “Who is it?”

“Mr. Greppin?”

Greppin drew in his breath. “Yes?”

“Will you let us in, please?”

“Well, who is it?”

“The police,” said the man outside.

“What do you want, I’m just sitting down to supper!”

“Just want a talk with you. The neighbors phoned. Said they hadn’t seen your aunt and uncle for two weeks. Heard a noise awhile ago—”

“I assure you everything is all right.” He forced a laugh.

“Well, then,” continued the voice outside, “we can talk it over in friendly style if you’ll only open the door.”

“I’m sorry,” insisted Greppin. “I’m tired and hungry, come back tomorrow. I’ll talk to you then, if you want me to.”

“I’ll have to insist, Mr. Greppin.”

They began to beat against the door.

Greppin turned automatically, stiffly, walked down the hall past the old clock, into the dining room, without a word. He seated himself without looking at any one i

n particular and then he began to talk, slowly at first, then more rapidly.

“Some pests at the door. You’ll talk to them, won’t you, Aunt Rose? You’ll tell them to go away, won’t you, we’re eating dinner? Everyone else go on eating and look pleasant and they’ll go away, if they do come in. Aunt Rose you will talk to them, won’t you? And now that things are happening I have something to tell you.” A few hot tears fell for no reason. He looked at them as they soaked and spread in the white linen, vanishing. “I don’t know anyone named Alice Jane Ballard. I never knew anyone named Alice Jane Ballard. It was all—all—I don’t know. I said I loved her and wanted to marry her to get around somehow to make you smile. Yes, I said it because I planned to make you smile, that was the only reason. I’m never going to have a woman, I always knew for years I never would have. Will you please pass the potatoes, Aunt Rose?”

* * *

The front door splintered and fell. A heavy softened rushing filled the hall. Men broke into the dining room.

A hesitation.

The police inspector hastily removed his hat.

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” he apologized. “I didn’t mean to intrude upon your supper, I—”

The sudden halting of the police was such that their movement shook the room. The movement catapulted the bodies of Aunt Rose and Uncle Dimity straight away to the carpet, where they lay, their throats severed in a half moon from ear to ear— which caused them, like the children seated at the table, to have what was the horrid illusion of a smile under their chins, ragged smiles that welcomed in the late arrivals and told them everything with a simple grimace.…

The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl

William Acton rose to his feet. The clock on the mantel ticked midnight.

He looked at his fingers and he looked at the large room around him and he looked at the man lying on the floor. William Acton, whose fingers had stroked typewriter keys and made love and fried ham and eggs for early breakfasts, had now accomplished a murder with those same ten whorled fingers.