Mrs. Rahlo's Closet and Other Mad Tales Read online

Why, if the Air Force knew Richard was such a mental cripple, did they accept him in the first place?

  • • •

  It is winter now. October’s leaves lie clothed in snow outside the hospital walls. The wind blows cold, to sift the snow like laundered sheets on a patient’s bed. The wind sings as it blows, into a lullaby of air and snow. Work, Ellen, fold your sheets as the wind bestows the snow.

  Be mindful of your patients, Ellen. Work hard and wonder less where Richard is. Work, Ellen. Fold down the sheets like drifts of snow.

  Snow piles on your park bench now. They sweep it clean as often as it falls, yet more will come. Sit on your bench while you can and write the letters which are never answered. Read your paper in the lull between the snow; search the stiff pages for reports of something too terrible to be believed stalking the shadows at night. There is nothing in the news. Go back to the hospital. Mind your patients, Ellen. Unfold your sheets and cure your sick, then hurry back to your park bench to scan the pages once more.

  Finally, it comes. On a leaden, weary, windswept day, the rising wind gathers the finely fallen snow into goblin mounds as you sit on your bench unfolding the chalky pages of a frozen newspaper. What is it the pages whisper to you? Merely an account of a military maneuver in the depths of night near an abandoned warehouse. Something covered by a blanket is carried out and hurriedly taken away in a guarded vehicle. That is all. Only a drill. It is enough. You know now.

  Sleep, Ellen. Sleep, Town. Sleep, World. All is well. They have Gordon now. • • •

  The snow gave way to rain that Tuesday morning when the government men arrived at her door.

  “Remember us, Miss Crane—Reynolds and Drake? Major Lockyer wants to see you. Can you come with us for an extended trip?”

  “I’m nearly late for work. I can’t just leave.”

  “We’ve cleared it with the hospital. Please come with us, Miss Crane. We’ll wait while you pack a bag.”

  “Major Lockyer is waiting for you.”

  She threw some clothes into her suitcase.

  They put her in a closed car and drove her to the base, past the buildings, to an airfield. All the while the rain fell till her plane rose above the clouds, only later to reenter the rain when the plane landed outside Washington. Another closed car drove her to a well-known building.

  They put her in a room like the room she sat in when she spoke with Colonel Sheldon, except the walls held no modern art. A man named Colonel Edwards sat facing her.

  “I understand that you’ve never been a parent, Miss Crane.”

  She nodded.

  “Nonetheless, wouldn’t you admit that a good parent protects his children from painful and upsetting knowledge—like death and disease?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I ask you, what good does it do a five-year-old to know its mother might fall apart with cancer? Don’t you agree?”

  It was a different room and a different face, yet, oddly enough, the voice wasn’t so very different. The two of them—Ellen and the new face—sat staring at each other across a simulated wooden desk. Just the two of them, each in a padded chair. No windows, so she could not see the rain.

  “The government, you know, tries to be a good parent. How does it benefit anybody to worry about—well, visitors from other planets, for example? Why frighten and confuse people?”

  “There is such a thing as truth,” she hazarded.

  “People don’t want truth; they want security. Ask anyone what he thinks of flying saucers. You’ll get an almost hysterical skepticism.”

  “They told me Major Lockyer made the whole thing up.”

  “That was to protect you, Miss Crane. Things are different now. What I am about to say is classified. If you reveal any part of what I am about to tell you, you may be arrested. Do you understand?”

  She nodded.

  “When Major Lockyer returned from his mission, he and Major Gordon were put aboard an ambulance and taken to base hospital. Major Lockyer was brought in while Gordon’s covered body was left in the ambulance.”

  He paused.

  “It was left there because the ones who put Gordon’s body into the ambulance were reluctant to handle it again. Does that sound probable?”

  “I don’t know what’s probable,” she said.

  “By the time a suitable team was assembled to deal with the body it had already been taken by Major Lockyer.”

  Again the pause.

  “It took us a while to find it. A passerby observed something crawling through a vent under an abandoned warehouse. He called the police. They called us. We sent out a team to secure the body and flew it to a certain facility, where it was examined.”

  “You took it out of the space suit?” she interrupted.

  “No. It was evident that the space suit is now part of him. We didn’t take it out.” He busied himself for a moment with a glass paperweight on his desk.

  “Gordon affected everyone right away—like a high-pitched sound or a bad smell. It was worse for the ones guarding the laboratory where the body was housed. One night a guard deserted.”

  “Is Gordon alive or dead?” she asked.

  “The man inside the space suit is dead. The space suit itself may be alive—in some sense.”

  He adverted a moment to his glass paperweight. “We’ve got the body stretched out on a table in a sealed room. It just lies there—till someone comes in. Then it half rises up to stare at him.

  “That’s precisely the way things are—were, until yesterday, when someone thought of bringing Major Lockyer into the room. That’s where you come in, Miss Crane.”

  “Me? How?”

  “Gordon sat up and spoke your name.”

  • • •

  A uniformed soldier courteously escorted her to an apartment in the same building as the office she had just left. It too was clean, brightly lit, windowless.

  Richard sat on a sofa.

  When they could talk again she sat beside him.

  “They believe me now.” His arms were around her. “They always did, but not officially. I’m free. But they want something. I don’t know what. There’s supposed to be a meeting; they say they need to talk with both of us.”

  “What did they do to you in the hospital? Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m all right. They didn’t do anything except ask questions. I’m fine now that you’re with me, except that phrase we talked about keeps running through my head. ‘Fear rules the universe.’ Over and over. I can’t get rid of it. Another thing. The principal—in high school . . . I’m beginning to remember little pieces of the things the principal told me. But I can’t get any of it to make sense. You know, Ellen, all I really want is you and a place away from the stars.”

  “We’ll have it all, darling. We’ll have everything.”

  “That phrase; I just can’t get that phrase out of my head.”

  “Don’t think about it now. When is the meeting supposed to start?”

  “At three.” He consulted his watch. “We’ve a couple of hours. What would you like to do?”

  Until the time of the meeting she sat with Richard on the sofa, holding his hand.

  • • •

  A gathering of impressive men—in uniform and civilian suits—sat around an oval conference table in a well-lighted room. Among the ones in civilian clothes she recognized a certain famous man. Another man she recognized, also a civilian, bald, red-faced and robust, laughing and whispering to a knot of men standing by him. She, too, sat at the table, Richard next to her, nodding as introductions were made all around.

  The Robust Man spoke first.

  “Miss Crane,” he said, laughing, bending his bald head forward, “we’re going to let our hair down with you.” Nobody else laughed.

  One who introduced himself as General Wilson took over. His eyes focused on Ellen and Richard.

  “I’ll tell you about the space people,” he said. “They call themselves the Grider. They’re people.” He nar
rowed his eyes. “I suppose they could be people. We started picking up their signals from outside our atmosphere just after the war. We tried signaling them back, but they didn’t respond, so we kept our ears open and pretended they didn’t exist. This was our policy for years—we listened, we sent back signals, we pretended they didn’t exist.

  “Everything changed about three years ago. They sent us a message one day that rocked us on our heels and put our entire military on alert. The Grider, it seems, have the ability to project images from deep space. What they showed us convinced the President and the Joint Chiefs, convinced the top military and the Secretary of State.

  “Apparently, some power in the galaxy is attacking and destroying every life-form in its path. The Grider are in its path. So is Earth. The Grider say they alone cannot stop the menace. They need our help. They’d already taken some steps to defeat this destructive power. Two young men were applying for our astronaut program, they said: Lockyer and Gordon.”

  “Me!” Richard started from his chair.

  “Yes, both were to be accepted. Both were to be trained for a secret space mission. It was the only way to stop the invasion coming at us. They didn’t say any more. They only showed us more pictures, very convincing pictures. The Grider never say more than they feel they have to. I suppose it is part of their psychology. Considering the magnitude of the crisis, we felt they asked for very little—two of our astronauts to help them save the galaxy from destruction.” He nodded to Colonel Edwards.

  “Everyone was curious as to why the Grider chose you two, Major Lockyer,” Colonel Edwards resumed. “They were examined, minutely, Miss Crane. Neither had any knowledge of beings from another world. In the interest of security, we told them they were part of a secret team to investigate objects in space; we created a special unit—military, you see—not civilian—attached to the Air Force, not to NASA. During this time we had no further communication from the Grider.

  “Until last October, when they sent another message, giving a navigational position and specifying a certain time. ‘We are waiting for Gordon,’ it said. ‘We are waiting for Lockyer.’”

  General Wilson spoke. “Colonel Edwards told you about Gordon saying your name when Major Lockyer went to view the body. What you don’t know is this. The same day, the Grider sent us a message telling us what they want.”

  “They want you, Miss Crane,” said the Robust Man.

  “Me.”

  “They want you and Major Lockyer to go into space together.”

  “Why? Why do they want me?”

  The bald Robust Man answered curtly. “They say you are necessary, Miss Crane. You, Major Lockyer. Oh, yes, and Gordon.”

  Ellen studied the faces at the table. They were all looking at her.

  “If you’re worried about your life, Miss Crane, we think that these beings, the Grider, wouldn’t go to so much trouble just to kill someone,” said the Robust Man.

  “What if they change me into something like Gordon?” she asked.

  “Really, Miss Crane, we hardly think so,” The Robust Man laughed. “I really think we should trust them.”

  “What I’m here for, Miss Crane,” said the Famous Man, “is to authorize your journey into space.”

  “Of course you don’t have to go,” said General Wilson.

  “Though the fate of our world may depend on what you do up there,” said the Robust Man.

  “It’s your decision,” said the Famous Man.

  “The fate of our world,” Ellen repeated. She stared at the faces around the room, her eyes coming at last to rest on Richard, sitting next to her. “I’ll go,” she said.

  • • •

  The best part was that space wasn’t black and gloomy as she’d supposed. It was gorgeous with stars. Wearing white space suits, they occupied adjoining seats in the cockpit, Richard piloting, all of heaven revealed through the wraparound windows. After the initial thrust all was perfectly, motionlessly still. Takeoff had made her only slightly giddy for a moment. The hasty training they had given her must have helped. Now, being free of Earth’s atmosphere, she surrendered herself to the glory of unending stars.

  She wanted to shout at so much beauty, at least to shout to Richard, but he was talking on the radio to the men at the base. She settled back to drink it all in. She had never thought of heaven as a real place of light and quiet.

  The only disquieting note was their fellow passenger, stowed in the baggage chamber adjacent to the cockpit. She reached over to make sure that the hatch was firmly shut.

  Richard droned on over the radio, with someone from the base interrupting every few minutes to ask questions or give instructions. She returned to the window and the stars.

  How she had stared at the stars that October night when it all began—as she hurried home to meet Richard for their wedding and honeymoon. Now here they were, drifting through fields of stars.

  She settled back farther in her seat. She had nothing to do while she waited for Richard to get off the radio, nothing to do but savor the stars.

  Something hid the stars.

  The cockpit shook.

  “You, at the base,” Richard shouted. “Something’s happening. Why don’t you answer? Hello!”

  The cockpit went dark, utterly, completely black.

  Richard screamed in the darkness.

  “What’s wrong?” she cried.

  “I’m remembering things—terrible things.”

  “What, Richard, what?”

  “That movie I saw as a kid—it wasn’t a movie. That’s when they got me.

  “And the high school principal—he was one of them. The thing in his closet he made me remember as a bag of golf clubs—it was shriveled and black and half a machine. It had once been a man. Oh, my God, it was so dry and shriveled. And it wasn’t in a closet. It wasn’t a closet at all. Oh, my God!”

  “Lockyer,” the voice came over the radio. “What’s happening? What’s happening?”

  All collapsed in screams and darkness.

  • • •

  “Fear rules the universe, children,” Mrs. Webster, the Girl Scout leader, insisted. “Pay attention. You must observe everything at the science fair.” She sounded so cross. Or was it Dr. Bradley, from Sunday school? No, now that she thought of it, the voice was more like the teacher’s from the third grade. What was her name?

  “Outer planets.” They all spoke at once—The Girl Scout leader, Dr. Bradley, Teacher, their outlines glowing like neon lights right in front of her. “Far without time.” This time she recognized Dr. Bradley’s spectacles. It was Dr. Bradley speaking.

  The science fair unwrapped all around her, exhibit after exhibit, perched on curious metal counters—lights, bottles, apparatuses that made no sense. And she. Was she lying or sitting? It was hard to see. Sometimes she thought she was standing. Now which one spoke?

  “They come.”

  She was sure now. The voices came from bright glass cylinders on one of the tables. She missed the first words, because she had to bend very low to hear, but it was Mrs. Webster’s voice, coming from something that wore a blue-and-white-checked gingham dress. That is how she knew it was Mrs. Webster. The others—Teacher and Dr. Bradley—were speaking, too, but they only made sounds she could not understand. The three of them—Teacher, Dr. Bradley and Mrs. Webster—seemed to have wrapped white gauze around their faces, while the room filled with the reflection of water.

  “They make us explode,” Dr. Bradley explained. She was sure it was Dr. Bradley speaking this time, though she could not see Dr. Bradley’s dark spectacles or Mrs. Webster’s checked dress because of the gauze bandages around them.

  “We explode, but we do not die. We cannot die.”

  “They make us explode,” said Dr. Bradley, nodding his spectacles.

  “Who are you?”

  “We are the Grider.”

  She was looking up at them. Each inhabited a towering glass cylinder filled with fluid. The gauze around their bodies began to unr
avel, floating dreamily as swaying tongues of white skin. She smelled alcohol. Mrs. Webster, Dr. Bradley, Teacher—they were the horrid dead babies preserved in alcohol.

  Instantly she knew. She had been here before, as a child—talking with these things. There had never been a science fair. Her mind had made it into a science fair—as Richard’s had made his horror into a set of golf clubs. She covered her eyes.

  “Something coming.” The voices cut through her fear.

  “What? What is coming?” She removed her hands from her face and stood on tiptoe to see them. The gauze unwound.

  “We chose you as a child.” Teacher was a tall peeling thing in a rising cylinder. She had to crane her neck to see its face—Dr. Bradley’s face. “We chose you as a child. For this moment.”

  “Me? What for? What for?”

  “For something coming. Something out there. We chose you.”

  The thing in the cylinder talked from Mrs. Webster’s checked dress.

  “We have modified your vehicle.”

  “We have an instrument to focus your thoughts.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We have prepared you to meet them.”

  “Who are they? Why should I meet them?” The liquid in the bottles turned so bright she had to shield her eyes. “What should I do?” she cried.

  “Stop them.” The voice was a high-pitched whine.

  “How far away are they?”

  “You will meet them where there is neither time nor distance.”

  “It will take no time at all; you are going beyond time.”

  “You will be simply there.” The light was going.

  “Who said that?” Ellen shivered. The lights burned out. Most of the science fair was collapsed now into wrong angles. In the dark surrounding the table with the bright cylinders, she sensed shadowy forms moving rapidly about.

  She tried to pierce the collapsing darkness. “Richard,” she demanded. “Where is Richard?”

  “He is alive aboard your vehicle. You will not see him because you must be alone.” The lights came up for a second more. “Fear rules the universe,” someone said. She saw them now as horrid dead babies in little glass bottles—swirls of peeling skin exposing tiny bones.