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In the center of the first doorway was a small familiar box. It looked as if it had been left by accident. I knew it was there as a gift.
Roy!
I lunged forward to stand, looking down, and touch the box. Whisper—tap.
Whatever lay inside rustled.
Are you in there, body from the ladder on the wall in the rain?
Whisper-tap-murmur.
Damn it! I thought, won’t I ever be rid of you!?
I grabbed the box and ran.
I reached the outer door and threw up.
Eyes shut, I wiped my mouth, then opened the door slowly. Far down the alley the workmen turned a corner toward the carpenters’ shop and the big iron incinerator.
Doc Phillips, behind them, gave silent directions.
I shivered. If I had arrived five minutes later, I might have come at the very moment he had found Roy’s body and the destroyed cities of the world. My body would have gone into the trunk with Roy’s!
My taxi was waiting behind Stage 9.
Nearby was a phone booth. I stumbled in, dropped a coin, called the police. A voice came on saying, “Yes? Hello, yes, hello, yes!”
I swayed drunkenly in the booth, looking at the receiver as if it were a dead snake.
What could I say? That a sound stage was cleared and empty? That an incinerator was probably burning right now, long before patrol cars and sirens could help?
And then what? Me, alone here with no armor, no weapons, no proof ?
Me fired and maybe dead and over that wall to the tombs on permanent loan?
No!
I gave a shriek. Someone battered me with a hammer until my skull was red clay, torn like the flesh of the Beast. Staggering to get out, I was yanked to strangle on my own fright in a coffin locked, no matter how I banged the glass.
The phone-booth door flew wide.
“You were pushing the wrong way!” my taxi driver said.
I gave some sort of crazy laugh and let him lead me out.
“You forgot something.”
He brought me the box, which had fallen in the booth.
Whisper-rustle-tap.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Him.”
On the way out of the studio, I lay down on the back seat. When we got to the first outside street corner, the driver said, “Which way do I turn?”
“Left.” I bit the back of my wrist. The driver was staring into his rear-view mirror.
“Jesus,” he said, “you look awful. You gonna be sick?”
