The Crate

responsibility has belonged with zo all along... like for a hundred and forty years.'

'But...' He swallowed, and there was a click in his throat as he prepared to voice his worst fear. 'But it may be out.'

'I doubt that,' Charlie said, but didn't elaborate. And in that, Dex saw two things: that Charlie didn't believe a word he had said, and that nothing he could say would dissuade Charlie from going back down there.

Henry Northrup glanced at his watch. They had been sitting in the study for a little over an hour; Wilma wouldn't be back for another two. Plenty of time. Unlike Charlie Gereson, he had passed no judgment at all on the factual basis of Dex's story. But he had known Dex for a longer time than young Gereson had, and he didn't believe his friend exhibited the signs of a man who has suddenly developed a psychosis. What he exhibited was a kind of bug-eyed fear, no more or

less than you'd expect to see a man who has had an extremely close call with... well, just an extremely close call.

'He went down, Dex?'

'Yes. He did.'

'You went with him?'

'Yes.'

Henry shifted position a little. 'I can understand why he didn't want to get campus security until he had checked the situation himself. But Dex, you knew you were telling the flat-out truth, even if he didn't. Why didn't you call?'

'You believe me?' Dex asked. His voice trembled. 'You believe me, don't you, Henry?'

Henry considered briefly. The story was mad, no question about that. The implication that there could be something in that box big enough and lively enough to kill a man after some one hundred and forty years was mad. He didn't believe it. But this was Dex... and he didn't disbelieve it either.

'Yes,' he said.

'Thank God for that,' Dex said. He groped for his drink. 'Thank God for that, Henry.'

'It doesn't answer the question, though. Why didn't you call the campus cops?'

'I thought... as much as I did think... that it might not want to come out of the crate, into the bright light. It must have lived in the dark for so long... so very long... and ... grotesque as this sounds... I though it might be pot- bound, or something. I thought ... well, he'll see it... he'll see the crate... the janitor's body... he'll see the blood... and then we'd call security. You see?' Stanley's eyes pleaded with him to see, and Henry did. He thought that, considering the fact that it had been a snap judgment in a presure situation, that Dex had thought quite clearly. The blood. When the young graduate student saw the blood, he would have been happy to call in the cops.

'But it didn't work out that way.'

'No.' Dex ran a hand through his thinning hair.

'Why not?'

'Because when we got down there, the body was gone.'

'It was gone?'

'That's right. And the crate was gone, too.'

When Charlie Gereson saw the blood, his round and good-natured face went very pale. His eyes, already magnified by his thick spectacles, grew even huger. Blood was puddled on the lab table. It had run down one of the table legs. It was pooled on the floor, and beads of it clung to the light globe and to the white tile wall. Yes, there was plenty of blood.

But no janitor. No crate.

Dex Stanley's jaw dropped. 'What the fuck!' Charlie whispered. Dex saw something then, perhaps the only thing that allowed him to keep his sanity. Already he could feel that central axle trying to pull free. He grabbed Charlie's shoulder and said, 'Look at the blood on the table!'

'I've seen enough,' Charlie said.

His Adam's apple rose and fell like an express elevator as he struggled to keep his lunch down.

'For God's sake, get hold of yourself,' Dex said harshly. 'You're a zoology major. You've seen blood before.'

It was the voice of authority, for that moment anyway. Charlie did get a hold of himself, and they walked a little closer. The random pools of blood on the table were not as random as they had first appeared. Each had been neatly straight-edged on one side.

'The crate sat there,' Dex said. He felt a little better. The fact that the crate really had been there steadied him a good deal. 'And look there.' He pointed at the floor. Here the blood had been smeared into a wide, thin trail. It swept toward where the two of them stood, a few paces inside the double doors. It faded and faded, petering out altogether about halfway between the lab table and the doors. It was crystal clear to Dex Stanley, and the nervous sweat on his skin went cold and clammy.

It had gotten out

.

It had gotten out and pushed the crate off the table. And then it had pushed the crate... where? Under the stairs, of course. Back under the stairs. Where it had been safe for so long.

'Where's the... the...' Charlie couldn't finish.