The Blob

Bloody murders were imminent.

Smack dab in center aisle, tenth row, Kevin Penny sat with his friends Eddie and Anthony, waiting for the deaths to begin.

The movie screen was splashed now with the images of Susie, a gorgeous blonde in cutoffs and a well-filled T-shirt, and Lance, the muscular young camp counselor. They were sitting on a picnic table by a bunch of hedges, and they were necking. This was boring to Kevin Penny. He wanted the exciting stuff to start, and he had the feeling that that gardener there, the one in the hockey mask with the hedge trimmer, was going to get things going!

“What’s wrong?” said Susie as Lance came up for air, looking around apprehensively.

“Isn’t it awfully late to be trimming the lawn? Maybe that guy’s a Peeping Tom or something.”

“Well, let’s give him something to peep at!” said Susie, pulling her hunk back down.

There was a cut to a close-up of the hedge trimmer, whirring and cutting twigs and leaves.

Kevin Penny shuddered deliciously, stuffing his face with a handful of popcorn. To his left Eddie and Anthony were wolfing down jujubes like nobody’s business. There was the air of the forbidden here in the dank and musty movie theater, and it gave Kevin an extra charge to be doing just what his mother had told him not to.

Not that what was happening on the screen wasn’t exciting! Boy, it sure was!

“I’m telling you,” said the camp counselor in the movie. “Something’s weird about that guy. Hockey season ended months ago.”

Behind the boys one of the moviegoers was talking loudly to his date. “Watch this,” he was saying. “He gets the camp counselor with the electric Garden Weasel, but the girl gets away!”

The whirring got louder and sure enough, here came Puck Face, slamming down his weapon onto poor Lance. Popcorn splattered as Kevin put salty fingers up to cover his eyes. Eeuuk! Blood everywhere! He couldn’t help but notice that Eddie and Anthony didn’t stir at all. They just stared and chuckled, eating all this up along with their candy.

“Watch,” said the goofball behind him. “She’s gonna run in the lodge and hide.”

Kevin was very annoyed. His very first slasher film was being ruined by some jerk who’d seen it before and insisted on telegraphing the upcoming action. Kevin turned and put his finger to his lips. “Shhh!”

As Kevin Penny expressed his annoyance, upstairs in the projection booth Phil Hobbs, who had seen the movie many times, leaned back in his chair and turned the page of his old Creepy magazine. The projectionist had read it before, and it wasn’t as good as the old EC horror comics he collected, but he couldn’t read his precious ECs at work. They’d get ruined, since he tended to suck down Cokes and smear his comics with peanut grease while unspooling the evening’s entertainment.

You had to find something to do up here between pushing the “on” button to the film and rewinding the things or you’d go crazy. Phil Hobbs liked to read comics, he liked to play with his yo-yo, and he liked companionship. The companionship he’d found in a pet he had bought some years ago—a spider monkey. He called the monkey Charlie, and Charlie really dug being assistant projectionist. He was also real good at shelling peanuts, and damned generous for a monkey.

That was exactly what he was doing now, perched atop the rewind table—shelling peanuts. He took two from their husk, gave one to Phil, and ate the other.

“Thanks, Charlie,” said Phil Hobbs, chomping down on the nut, then flipping the page of the old black-and- white comic, not missing a flip of his yo-yo.

Charlie chittered in reply.

“Geez, what you think, Charlie,” said Hobbs, realizing that he was sweating. “Getting kinda hot in here, isn’t it? Stuffy too? Think we should report bad working conditions to the management or to the union?”

He got up to check the air-conditioning vent. “Thing’s giving off nothing, and on a night like this! Maybe the vent’s clogged or something.”

He unlatched the vent and opened it. Still not a bit of cool air was forthcoming.

“Wonderful,” said Phil Hobbs. “No, the union won’t get the results as fast as we need them.” He went to the phone and called down to Clyde Mitchell, the manager, still keeping the yo-yo going, executing some tricky moves to keep his mind off the heat. “Hi, Clyde,” he said when the phone was picked up on the other end. “It’s Hobbs. Listen, it’s boiling up here. The air conditioning on?”

“Sure is,” said Mitchell. “And don’t you know I’m paying a pretty penny for it!”

“Well, it ain’t happening up here. Come up and see for yourself if you don’t believe me.” He cradled the receiver and continued his yo-yoing as he delved back into his vampire story. Shoulda brought a Vampirella comic, he thought. He liked any given Vampy story better than the usual run of Creepy vampire stories.

Charlie the spider monkey didn’t care much about the heat, but something did attract his attention. A barely audible metallic creaking sound was coming from the duct that his master had opened. Charlie wondered what the hell it was, and his curiosity got the better of him. He abandoned his paper bag of peanuts and skittered over there, jumping up to the edge and perching, looking down into the dark hole.

Creak creak creak…

When Phil Hobbs held his hand out for his next peanut, he received nothing. He looked up from his comic book and saw no monkey on the rewind table.

“Charlie?”

He swiveled around and caught movement at the air-conditioning duct—Charlie’s tail, just disappearing.

Good Lord, the simian simpleton had gone into the hole!

“Hey!” cried Phil Hobbs and rushed to the hole. “Charlie, get outta there!”

In the hole there was only darkness. He could see nothing. He stuck his head in, calling for his pet. “Charlie!”

His voice echoed into the piping.

“Where the hell are you?”

It gobbled down the tiny creature, but the protoplasm only maddened it. Food, more food!

It had lain awhile in the sewers, feeding on rats and digesting its prey from the phone booth and from the police car it had invaded, but its raging need for more flesh and blood had urged it out of its hole, up and up, to where it sensed many animate bags of blood. Food, more food!

And now the Blob saw the man sticking his head into the duct, and it raced up toward the vibrations of his voice… and the pulsing of his blood.

Clyde Mitchell, the manager of the Morgan City theater, walked up the steps toward the projection booth.

He couldn’t figure out for the life of him what was wrong with the air conditioning. He’d checked the units downstairs and they were churning along, nice as you please. Still, he didn’t want to upset his projectionist. Hobbs was a good one, and they were hard to get in a town like Morgan City. Mitchell was young yet, and he had aspirations of heading for the top of the chain of theaters that he worked for. But he wouldn’t get anywhere if this job wasn’t run efficiently.

At the top of the stairs he tried the door. It was locked. He rattled it a bit, but no one came to open it.

“C’mon, Hobbs, put the yo-yo down and open this door!”

No answer. Well, he had a key ring. Wearily he pulled out the proper key and opened the door.

The film was still chugging away. Light flickered along the front of the booth, almost like an erratic strobe, but otherwise the room was dark. The manager pulled out his usher’s flashlight and swept it across the room in a slow arc.

Phil Hobbs was nowhere to be seen.

“Hobbs? You in here?” he called, becoming apprehensive.

It came down with a whir.

The yo-yo.

It came down from the ceiling, and bumped there at the end of its string. And something was dripping down