He didn’t say hello to Joey, the lobby attendant, like he usually did, but went straight to the locker room and put his maintenance man’s uniform on. Joey mumbled something as he went past, something like “Grouch,” with a laugh, but Lansing let it pass.
Morelli was waiting for him on the 15th floor, and yelled at him good-naturedly when he came off the elevator, for being late.
“Look at this, kid,” Morelli said suddenly, turning and holding up his right leg. “Look what I did shaving this morning.” There was a stump on the end, no foot—and then Morelli laughed and popped his shoe out of the pulled- down pants cuff.
“Got you that time, kid,” he said, and laughed again. “Go clean up that mess on 18, the workmen’ll be in early tomorrow to start. You okay, kiddo?”
“Uh, yeah, Nick.” Lansing nodded curtly and left.
The eighteenth floor was completely gutted for renovation, and he went there gratefully, happy to be alone. But soon the emptiness of the floor and the strange shadows cast by the boxes and crates lying around began to get to him. He heard noises, and imagined a dancing foot, a legion of dancing feet, kicking things around, marching right up to him—
He swung around as the elevator door suddenly opened. Nobody got off. After a moment the doors closed again, and the arrival light over the opening went out. There was dusty silence for a moment, and then as Lansing turned to get back to work something moved.
He distinctly saw it, a severed foot scooting around a crate by the elevator, and out of sight. He began to shake and his body went numb, as if two giant icy hands had grabbed him. There was a scratching sound, and then the sound of a moving ballet slipper.
Lansing went rigid. The shuffling got louder, and then he saw a foot with a slipper on it appear from behind the crate.
Suddenly the elevator doors opened again, and the foot ran behind a box. Morelli stepped out into the room.
“Hey kid,” he said, and then he saw Lansing standing frozen. “What’s wrong?”
“The foot!” Lansing said.
“What?”
“Don’t you hear the dancing?” He felt as if he would faint.
“Kid, go home early. Right now. Whatever’s wrong, flush it out and come back tomorrow ready to work. I don’t want a sick guy on the job, makes me look like a lousy foreman. Believe me, you don’t look so good.”
“I—” He nodded. “Okay.”
He got in the most crowded subway car on the train and looked straight ahead all the way home. He was afraid that if he looked down he would see the foot in front of him. He thought he heard the rap-shuffle of it walking, but he refused to look. There was a light kick at the cuff of his pants just before his stop, but still he gritted his teeth and stared straight ahead.
He ran to his apartment and bolted the door, stuffing towels underneath the sill. He heard tiny footsteps outside. He slammed the windows shut, and double-locked the window leading to the fire escape, pulling down the shade. He sat on the bed in the corner of the room and pulled up his knees, closing his eyes tight.
There was the squeak-shuffle sound of a ballet slipper dancing.
He went to the window, sweating, and peeked out under the shade. An old man had set his hat on the ground in front of the building, and was doing a soft shoe dance.
Lansing yanked up the window and screamed at the old man, who quickly moved off. He pulled the window back down and went back to the bed.
Shutting his eyes, he tried to think of the girl and the train. But only the image of his mother came to him, dancing her hand in front of him, waiting for his baby smile, then the fist—
Something was kicking around in the closet, and then the closet door opened.
The foot was in the room. Lansing opened his eyes and saw it skitter under the bed. It began to kick things around, moving shoes around, jumping up and kicking at the bottom of the mattress.
He screamed and stood quickly up as the foot leaped onto the bed. It disappeared under the covers; Lansing could see it moving around underneath them.
He pulled frantically at the bolts on the door, missing and then finally unlocking them. He threw open the door. He heard the rumple of bedclothes behind him, as the foot kicked the covers aside to follow him. He ran down into the street and toward the subway. Looking back once over his shoulder, he saw the foot walking leisurely, keeping up with him about a half a block behind.
He heard the soft shoe again. It was the old man; he had set his hat down by the subway entrance, and was dancing. Lansing ran past him, kicking the hat as he did so; the old man stopped his dance and yelled after him.
Desperate, Lansing jumped the turnstile, and turned back to see the foot running underneath it. He began to scream, and the startled crowd moved aside in a swath to let him pass. A transit cop, seeing him, began to follow.
He ran down the stairs two at a time to the lower level, and along the platform of the express track. The foot was behind him. There was a roaring in his ears; he looked back to see the transit cop in the distance, an express train coming in, and the foot a few feet behind him, taking great springing jumps into the air. He tried to duck as the foot leaped onto his back, kicking him over the edge of the platform onto the tracks in front of the train. He landed on his back between the two tracks. Wild with terror, he looked over to see the foot stamping at him, and with a convulsive effort he rolled over the track to his right to safety as the train screeched toward him. But then, he realized with horror, the foot was stepping on his left leg, holding it down over the track, pressing it down as the train passed.
There was the shriek of steel on steel and then blackness.
~ * ~
He awoke in the hospital to the sound of Morelli’s voice. The foreman was hovering over him.
“Thank God, he’s coming around,” Morelli said. “Hey kid, how you feel?”
“I…okay, I guess,” he replied. He tried to push himself up to a sitting position and discovered that there was nothing to push with on his left leg but a stump.
Morelli moved quickly to help him sit up. “Hey kid,” he said, obvious concern in his voice, “I’m really sorry about what happened. I keep thinking about fooling you that day with my pants leg pulled down over my shoe and it makes me shiver. That didn’t freak you out, did it?”
“No. No, I’ll be all right,” he said. “You were just kidding around. That had nothing to do with it.”
Morelli looked relieved. “That’s great. I was really worried about it. You know, you were really lucky, kid. There was a cop right there when it happened, he said if you hadn’t moved at the last second you’d have been cut in half or mashed to a pulp. In fact, they might have been able to do something with your foot if…”
Lansing immediately became alert with fear. “What happened to my foot?”
“They…well, they couldn’t find it. It’s really weird.”
Lansing said nothing; and then suddenly the vision of his apartment left open, with the clippings of the girl, sprang to his mind. “What happened to my apartment? I left it open—”
“Don’t worry about it, kid. I locked it up for you. It was dark when I went over so I just shut the door. And don’t worry about your job, either, I’ll see you get it back when you get rehabilitated. There’s no reason why you can’t come back to work with…the way you are.”
Lansing’s mind was racing. “Thanks, Nick. I mean it. I…think I’d better rest now.”
“Sure, kid,” said Morelli. “I’ll come back to see you tomorrow.”
In the quiet of his room a sudden peace came over Lansing. It was incredible how it all fit so neatly together. He almost shivered with pleasure. He had killed the girl, and she had gotten her revenge; she was dead and he was alive. She had taken his foot, but he could live without it; he would learn to work and do everything else with it. And he would always have that secret knowledge of what he had done and that he had survived it. He began to smile to himself and drew his knees up, resting gently on the stump of his left leg, rocking slowly. I’ve beaten them, he thought, and even the image of his mother’s fingers dancing before him didn’t bother him now.
And then he heard the shuffling.
It was very faint at first, very far away, as if it were way down the corridor or outside his window on the
