Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 2

They turned a curve in the path – and there it was.

In the singing deep night, in the shade of warm trees, as if she had laid herself out to enjoy the soft stars and the easy wind, her hands at either side of her like the oars of a delicate craft, lay Elizabeth Ramsell!

Francine screamed.

‘Don’t scream!’ Lavinia put out her hands to hold onto Francine, who was whimpering and choking. ‘Don’t! Don’t!’

The woman lay as if she had floated there, her face moonlit, her eyes wide and like flint, her tongue sticking from her mouth.

‘She’s dead!’ said Francine. ‘Oh, she’s dead, dead! She’s dead!’

Lavinia stood in the middle of a thousand warm shadows with the crickets screaming and the frogs loud.

‘We’d better get the police,’ she said at last.

Hold me, Lavinia, hold me, I’m cold, oh, I’ve never been so cold in all my life!’

Lavinia held Francine and the policemen were brushing through the crackling grass, flashlights ducked about, voices mingled, and the night grew toward eight-thirty.

‘It’s like December. I need a sweater,’ said Francine, eyes shut, against Lavinia.

The policeman said, ‘I guess you can go now, ladies. You might drop by the station tomorrow for a little more questioning.’

Lavinia and Francine walked away from the police and the sheet over the delicate thing upon the ravine grass.

Lavinia felt her heart going loudly in her and she was cold, too, with a February cold; there were bits of sudden snow all over her flesh, and the moon washed her brittle fingers whiter, and she remembered doing all the talking while Francine just sobbed against her.

A voice called from far off, ‘You want an escort, ladies?’

‘No, we’ll make it,’ said Lavinia to nobody, and they walked on. They walked through the nuzzling, whispering ravine, the ravine of whispers and clicks, the little world of investigation growing small behind them with its lights and voices.

‘I’ve never seen a dead person before,’ said Francine.

Lavinia examined her watch as if it was a thousand miles away on an arm and wrist grown impossibly distant. ‘It’s only eight-thirty. We’ll pick up Helen and get on to the show.’

‘The show!’ Francine jerked.

‘It’s what we need. We’ve got to forget this. It’s not good to remember. If we went home now we’d remember. We’ll go to the show as if nothing happened.’

‘Lavinia, you don’t mean it!’

‘I never meant anything more in my life. We need to laugh now and forget.’

‘But Elizabeth’s back there – your friend, my friend—’

‘We can’t help her; we can only help ourselves. Come on.’

They started up the ravine side, on the stony path, in the dark. And suddenly there, barring their way, standing very still in one spot, not seeing them, but looking on down at the moving lights and the body and listening to the official voices, was Douglas Spaulding.

He stood there, white as a mushroom, with his hands at his sides, staring down into the ravine.

‘Get home!’ cried Francine.

He did not hear.

‘You!’ shrieked Francine. ‘Get home, get out of this place, you hear? Get home, get home, get home!’

Douglas jerked his head, stared at them as if they were not there. His mouth moved. He gave a bleating sound. Then, silently, he whirled about and ran. He ran silently up the distant hills into the warm darkness.

Francine sobbed and cried again and, doing this, walked on with Lavinia Nebbs.

‘There you are! I thought you ladies’d never come!’ Helen Greer stood tapping her foot atop her porch steps. ‘You’re only an hour late, that’s all. What happened?’

‘We—’ started Francine.

Lavinia clutched her arm tight. ‘There was a commotion. Somebody found Elizabeth Ramsell in the ravine.’

‘Dead? Was she – dead?’

Lavinia nodded. Helen gasped and put her hand to her throat. ‘Who found her?’

Lavinia held Francine’s wrist firmly. ‘We don’t know.’

The three young women stood in the summer night looking at each other. ‘I’ve got a notion to go in the house and lock the doors,’ said Helen at last.

But finally she went to get a sweater, for though it was still warm, she, too, complained of the sudden winter night. While she was gone Francine whispered frantically, ‘Why didn’t you tell her?’

‘Why upset her?’ said Lavinia. ‘Tomorrow. Tomorrow’s plenty of time.’

The three women moved along the street under the black trees, past suddenly locked houses. How soon the news had spread outward from the ravine, from house to house, porch to porch, telephone to telephone. Now, passing, the three women felt eyes looking out at them from curtained windows as locks rattled into place. How strange the popsicle, the vanilla night, the night of close-packed ice cream, of mosquito-lotioned wrists, the night of running children suddenly veered from their games and put away behind glass, behind wood, the popsicles in melting puddles of lime and strawberry where they fell when the children were scooped indoors. Strange the hot rooms with the sweating people pressed tightly back into them behind the bronze knobs and knockers. Baseball bats and balls lay upon the unfootprinted lawns. A half-drawn, white-chalk game of hopscotch lay on the broiled, steamed sidewalk. It was as if someone had predicted freezing weather a moment ago.

‘We’re crazy being out on a night like this,’ said Helen.

‘Lonely One won’t kill three ladies,’ said Lavinia. ‘There’s safety in numbers. And besides, it’s too soon. The killings always come a month separated.’

A shadow fell across their terrified faces. A figure loomed behind a tree. As if someone had struck an organ a terrible blow with his fist, the three women gave off a scream, in three different shrill notes.

‘Got you!’ roared a voice. The man plunged at them. He came into the light, laughing. He leaned against a tree, pointing at the ladies weakly, laughing again.

‘Hey! I’m the Lonely One!’ said Frank Dillon.

‘Frank Dillon!’

‘Frank!’

‘Frank,’ said Lavinia, ‘if you ever do a childish thing like that again, may someone riddle you with bullets!’

‘What a thing to do!’