Invasion of The Body Snatchers

high and shrill. 'I can't go back there, Jack! I can't set foot in that house! ' Her voice, as Jack stumbled to his feet, rose still higher. 'I know what I saw; it was turning into you. Jack, it was!' And as he took her into his arms, the tears were tumbling down her cheeks, and the fear stood naked in her eyes again.

After a moment I was able to speak quietly. 'Then don't go,' I said to Theodora. 'Stay right here.' They both turned to look at me, and I said, 'You've got to, both of you.' I smiled a little. 'It's a big house; pick out a room and stay; bring your typewriter down, Jack, and work. I'd love to have you. I rattle around in this house, and I could use some company.'

Jack studied my face for a moment. 'You sure?'

'Absolutely.'

He looked down at Theodora, and she nodded dumbly, pleadingly, 'All right,' Jack said to me then. 'Maybe we'd better; for a day or so. Thanks, Miles, thanks a lot.'

'You, too, Becky,' I said then. 'You've got to stay, too – for a few days, anyway. With Theodora and Jack,' something made me add.

Her face was pale, but she grinned a little at that. 'With Theodora and Jack,' she repeated. 'And where'll you be?'

My face flushed, but I smiled. 'Right here,' I agreed, 'but you can ignore me.'

Theodora looked up from Jack's shoulder, and now she was able to smile, too. 'It might be fun, Becky,' she said. 'And I'll chaperon.'

Becky's eyes were dancing. 'It might at that, a sort of house party that goes on for days.' Then the fear came into her eyes again. 'I was just thinking of my dad, that's all,' she said to me.

'Phone him,' I said, 'and just tell him the truth. That something has upset Theodora pretty badly, she's going to stay here, and she needs you. That's all you have to say.' I grinned. 'Though you might add that I have some wicked, sinful plans in mind that you simply can't resist.' I glanced at the wall clock. 'I've got to get to work, pals; the joint is yours.' Then I went upstairs to get ready for the office.

I was more irritated than scared, standing at my bathroom mirror, shaving. A part of my mind was frightened at the fact we'd just faced downstairs: that the body in Jack's basement, incredibly, impossibly, and undeniably, had had no fingerprints. We hadn't imagined that, I knew, and it was a fact Mannie's explanation couldn't cover. But mostly, leaning toward the mirror scraping my face, I was annoyed; I didn't want Becky Driscoll living here in my house, where I'd see her more every day than I ordinarily would in a week. She was too attractive, likeable, and good-looking, and the danger in that was obvious.

I talk to myself when I shave. 'You handsome bastard,' I said to my face. 'You can marry them, all right; you just can't stay married, that's your trouble. You are weak. Emotionally unstable. Basically insecure. A latent thumb-sucker. A cesspool of immaturity, unfit for adult responsibility.' I smiled, and tried to think of some more. 'You are undoubtedly a quack, and a Don Juan personality. A pseudo – ' I cut it out, and finished shaving with the uncomfortable feeling that for all I knew it wasn't funny but true, that having failed with one woman, I was getting too involved with another, and that for my sake and hers, she should be anywhere but here under my roof.

Jack rode downtown with me to talk to Nick Grivett, the local police chief; we both knew him well. Jack had, after all, found a dead body; and it had disappeared. He had to report that. But we decided, on the way down in my car, that he'd report just those bare facts, nothing more. We couldn't explain his delay in reporting, so we decided he'd alter the time sequence a little, and say he found the body last night, instead of the morning before; it might just as well have happened that way.

Even at that, there'd be a little delay to account for; why hadn't he phoned the police last night, then? We decided Jack would explain that Theodora was upset and hysterical; he couldn't think of anything else till she was taken care of, and had rushed her to a doctor, me. She'd had a bad shock, so they were staying at my place, and Jack had gone home to pick up some clothes before phoning the police; and then he'd discovered the body was gone. We figured Grivett would bawl him out a little, but there wasn't much else he could do. Smiling, I told Jack to act as dopy and absent-minded as he could, and Grivett would put it all down to his being an impractical literary type.

Jack nodded and smiled a little at that, then his face went serious again. 'Forget the fingerprints, too, you think? When I talk to Grivett?'

I shrugged and grimaced. 'You'll have to. Grivett would have you committed if you mentioned that.' We'd pulled up at the police station, Jack got out, and I grinned and waved then, and drove on.

Chapter nine

But I was in a bad mood when I parked my car – on a side street near my office, just out of the parking-meter zone. Worry, doubt, and fear were twisting through my mind as I walked the block and a half to the office, and the look of Main Street depressed me. It seemed littered and shabby in the morning sun, a city trash basket stood heaped and unemptied from the day before, the globe of an overhead street light was broken, and a few doors from the building where my office was a shop stood empty. The windows were whitened, and a clumsily painted For Rent sign stood leaning against the glass. It didn't say where to apply, though, and I had the feeling no one cared whether the store was ever rented again. A smashed whisky bottle lay in the entranceway of my building, and the brass nameplate set in the grey stone of the building was mottled and unpolished. All up and down the street, as I stopped for a moment to look, not a soul was out washing down a store window as the shop-owners usually were of a morning, and the street seemed oddly deserted. It was simply the mood I was in, I told myself; I was looking at the world in fear and worry, and I reprimanded myself; it's no way to let yourself feel when you're diagnosing and treating patients.

A patient was waiting when I got upstairs; she had no appointment, but I was a little early, so I worked her in. She was a Mrs. Seeley, the quiet little woman of forty who had sat in this same chair a week before telling me that her husband wasn't her husband at all. Now she was smiling, actually squirming with relief and pleasure, as she told me her delusion was gone. She'd talked to Dr. Kaufman last week as I'd suggested, she told me; he hadn't seemed to help her much, but last evening, unexplainedly, she'd 'come to her senses.'

'I was sitting in the living-room reading,' she said eagerly, clasping her hands nervously on her purse, 'when suddenly I looked up at Al across the room; he was watching the fights on television.' She shook her head in happy bewilderment. 'And I knew it was him. Really him, I mean – Al, my husband. Dr. Bennell' – she stared at me wonderingly across the desk – 'I just don't know what happened last week; I really don't know, and I feel so foolish. Of course' – she sat back in her chair – 'I had heard of another case like mine. A lady in my club told me about it; said there'd been several such cases in town. And Dr. Kaufman explained to me that hearing about those cases… '

When she'd told me, finally, what Dr. Kaufman had said, and what she had said, and I'd listened, and nodded, and smiled, I got her out of the office – still talking – in a fairly reasonable time. She'd have stayed all afternoon, bubbling over, if I'd let her.

My nurse had come in while Mrs. Seeley was talking, and brought in my appointment list. I glanced down it, now, and – sure enough – there was the name of one of the three mothers of high-school girls who had called on me so frantically the week before. She was down for three-thirty, and later that afternoon, when my nurse ushered her in, she was smiling, and before she even sat down, began telling me what I knew I'd hear. The girls were all right, and fonder than ever of their English instructor. The teacher had accepted their apologies gracefully, showing some understanding of what had happened; and she'd made the sensible suggestion that the girls simply explain to their schoolmates that it had all been a joke, a schoolgirl hoax. They'd done this, and successfully. Their friends, the mother in my office assured me, actually admired the girls' skill as pranksters, and now she, the mother, wasn't worried a bit. Dr. Kaufman had explained to her how easily such a delusion can affect a person, particularly adolescent girls.

The moment the happy mother had left, I picked up my phone, called Wilma Lentz at her shop, and when she answered, I asked her casually how she was feeling these days. There was a pause before she replied, then she said, 'I've been meaning to step in and see you about – what happened.' She laughed, not very successfully, then said, 'Mannie helped me, all right, Miles, just the way you said. The delusion, or whatever it was, is gone, and –