Nightmare at 20,000 Feet

“Yes?” She looked at him apprehensively.

“Will you—sit down, please?” he asked.

She hesitated. “Well, I—”

“Please.”

She sat down gingerly on the seat beside his.

“What is it, Mr. Wilson?” she asked.

He braced himself.

“That man is still outside,” he said.

The stewardess stared at him.

“The reason I’m telling you this,” Wilson hurried on, “is that he’s starting to tamper with one of the engines.”

She turned her eyes instinctively toward the window.

“No, no, don’t look,” he told her. “He isn’t there now.” He cleared his throat viscidly. “He—jumps away whenever you come here.”

A sudden nausea gripped him as he realized what she must be thinking. As he realized what he, himself, would think if someone told him such a story, a wave of dizziness seemed to pass across him and he thought—I am going mad!

“The point is this,” he said, fighting off the thought. “If I’m not imagining this thing, the ship is in danger.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “You think I’ve lost my mind.”

“Of course not,” she said.

“All I ask is this,” he said, struggling against the rise of anger. “Tell the pilots what I’ve said. Ask them to keep an eye on the wings. If they see nothing—all right. But if they do—”

The stewardess sat there quietly, looking at him. Wilson’s hands curled into fists that trembled in his lap.

“Well?” he asked.

She pushed to her feet. “I’ll tell them,” she said.

Turning away, she moved along the aisle with a movement that was, to Wilson, poorly contrived—too fast to be normal yet, clearly, held back as if to reassure him that she wasn’t fleeing. He felt his stomach churning as he looked out at the wing again.

Abruptly, the man appeared again, landing on the wing like some grotesque ballet dancer. Wilson watched him as he set to work again, straddling the engine casing with his thick, bare legs and picking at the plates.

Well, what was he so concerned about? thought Wilson. That miserable creature couldn’t pry up rivets with his fingernails. Actually, it didn’t matter if the pilots saw him or not—at least as far as the safety of the plane was concerned. As for his own personal reasons—

It was at that moment that the man pried up one edge of a plate.

Wilson gasped. “Here, quickly!” he shouted, noticing, up ahead, the stewardess and the pilot coming through the cockpit doorway.

The pilot’s eyes jerked up to look at Wilson, then abruptly, he was pushing past the stewardess and lurching up the aisle.

“Hurry!” Wilson cried. He glanced out the window in time to see the man go leaping upward. That didn’t matter now. There would be evidence.

“What’s going on?” the pilot asked, stopping breathlessly beside his seat.

“He’s torn up one of the engine plates!” said Wilson in a shaking voice.

“He’s what?”

“The man outside!” said Wilson. “I tell you he’s—!”

“Mister Wilson, keep your voice down!” ordered the pilot. Wilson’s jaw went slack.

“I don’t know what’s going on here,” said the pilot, “but—”

“Will you look?!” shouted Wilson.

“Mister Wilson, I’m warning you.”

“For God’s sake!” Wilson swallowed quickly, trying to repress the blinding rage he felt. Abruptly, he pushed back against his seat and pointed at the window with a palsied hand. “Will you, for God’s sake, look?” he asked.

Drawing in an agitated breath, the pilot bent over. In a moment, his gaze shifted coldly to Wilson’s. “Well?” he asked.

Wilson jerked his head around. The plates were in their normal position.

“Oh, now wait,” he said before the dread could come. “I saw him pry that plate up.”

“Mister Wilson, if you don’t—”

“I said I saw him pry it up,” said Wilson.

The pilot stood there looking at him in the same withdrawn, almost aghast way as the stewardess had. Wilson shuddered violently.

“Listen, I saw him!” he cried. The sudden break in his voice appalled him.

In a second, the pilot was down beside him. “Mister Wilson, please,” he said. “All right, you saw him. But remember there are other people aboard. We mustn’t alarm them.”

Wilson was too shaken to understand at first.

“You—mean you’ve seen him then?” he asked.

“Of course,” the pilot said, “but we don’t want to frighten the passengers. You can understand that.”

“Of course, of course, I don’t want to—”

Wilson felt a spastic coiling in his groin and lower stomach. Suddenly, he pressed his lips together and looked at the pilot with malevolent eyes.

“I understand,” he said.

“The thing we have to remember—” began the pilot.

“We can stop now,” Wilson said.

“Sir?”

Wilson shuddered. “Get out of here,” he said.

“Mister Wilson, what—?”

“Will you stop?” Face whitening, Wilson turned from the pilot and stared out at the wing, eyes like stone.

He glared back suddenly.

“Rest assured I’d not say another word!” he snapped.

“Mr. Wilson, try to understand our—”

Wilson twisted away and stared out venomously at the engine. From a corner of his vision, he saw two passengers standing in the aisle looking at him. Idiots! his mind exploded. He felt his hands begin to tremble and, for a few seconds, was afraid that he was going to vomit. It’s the motion, he told himself. The plane was bucking in the air now like a storm-tossed boat.

He realized that the pilot was still talking to him and, refocusing his eyes, he looked at the man’s reflection in the window. Beside him, mutely sombre, stood the stewardess. Blind idiots, both of them, thought Wilson. He did not indicate his notice of their departure. Reflected on the window, he saw them heading toward the rear of the cabin. They’ll be discussing me now, he thought. Setting up plans in case I grow violent.

He wished now that the man would reappear, pull off the cowling plate and ruin the engine. It gave him a sense of vengeful pleasure to know that only he stood between catastrophe and the more than thirty people aboard. If he chose, he could allow that catastrophe to take place. Wilson smiled without humour. There would be a royal suicide, he thought.

The little man dropped down again and Wilson saw that what he’d thought was correct—the man had pressed the plate back into place before jumping away. For, now, he was prying it up again and it was raising easily, peeling back like skin excised by some grotesque surgeon. The motion of the wing was very broken but the man seemed to have no difficulty staying balanced.

Once more Wilson felt panic. What was he to do? No one believed him. If he tried to convince them any more