wanna go wif Daddy, go wif Daddy."' Billings's voice had become a high treble, like a child's. His eyes seemed to fill his entire face; he almost seemed to shrink on the couch.
'But I couldn't,' the childish breaking treble continued, 'I couldn't. And an hour later there was a scream. An awful gurgling scream. And I knew how much I loved him because I ran, in, I didn't even turn on the light, I ran, ran, ran, oh, Jesus God Mary, it had him; it was shaking him, shaking him just like a terrier shakes a piece of cloth and I could see something with awful slumped shoulders and a scarecrow head and I could smell something like a dead mouse in a pop bottle and I heard . .
He trailed off, and then his voice clicked back into an adult range. 'I heard it when Andy's neck broke.' Billings's voice was cool and dead. 'It made a sound like ice cracking when you're skating on a country pond in winter.'
'Then what happened?'
'Oh, I ran,' Billings said in the same cool, dead voice. 'I went to an all-night diner. How's that for complete cowardice? Ran to an all-night diner and drank six cups of coffee. Then I went home. It was already dawn. I called the police even before I went upstairs. He was lying on the floor and staring at me. Accusing me. A tiny bit of blood had run out of one ear. Only a drop, really. And the closet door was open - but just a crack.'
The voice stopped. Harper looked at the digital clock. Fifty minutes had passed.
'Make an appointment with the nurse,' he said. 'In fact, several of them. Tuesdays and Thursdays?'
'I only came to tell my story,' Billings said. 'To get it off my chest. I lied to the police, see? Told them the kid must have tried to get out of his crib in the night and. . . they swallowed it. Course they did. That's just what it looked like. Accidental, like the others. But Rita knew. Rita. finally. . . knew .
He covered his eyes with his right arm and began to weep.
'Mr Billings, there is a great deal to talk about,' Dr Harper said after a pause. 'I believe we can remove some of the guilt you've been carrying, but first you have to want to get rid of it.'
'Don't you believe I do?' Billings cried, removing his arm from his eyes. They were red, raw, wounded.
'Not yet,' Harper said quietly. 'Tuesdays and Thursdays?'
After a long silence, Billings muttered, 'Goddamn shrink. All right. All right.'
'Make an appointment with the nurse, Mr Billings. And have a good day.'
Billings laughed emptily and walked out of the office quickly, without looking back.
The nurse's station was empty. A small sign on the desk blotter said: 'Back in a Minute.'
Billings turned and went back into the office. 'Doctor, your nurse is -,
The room was empty.
But the closet door was open. Just a crack.
'So nice,' the voice from the closet said. 'So nice.' The words sounded as if they might have come through a mouthful of rotted seaweed.
Billings stood rooted to the spot as the closet door swung open. He dimly felt warmth at his crotch as he wet himself.
'So nice,' the boogeyman said as it shambled out. It still held its Dr Harper mask in one rotted, spade-claw hand.
GREY MATTER
They had been predicting a norther all week and along about Thursday we got it, a real screamer that piled up eight inches by four in the afternoon and showed no signs of slowing down. The usual five or six were gathered around the Reliable in Henry's Nite-Owl, which is the only little store on this side of Bangor that stays open right around the clock.
Henry don't do a huge business - mostly, it amounts to selling the college kids their beer and wine - but he gets by and it's a place for us old duffers on Social Security to get together and talk about who's died lately and how the world's going to hell.
This afternoon Henry was at the counter; Bill Pelham, Bertie Connors, Carl Littlefield, and me was tipped up by the stove. Outside, not a car was moving on Ohio Street, and the ploughs was having hard going. The wind was socking drifts across that looked like the backbone on a dinosaur.
Henry'd only had three customers all afternoon - that is, if you want to count in blind Eddie. Eddie's about seventy, and he ain't completely blind. Runs into things, mostly. He comes in once or twice a week and sticks a loaf of bread under his coat and walks out with an expression on his face like: there, you stupid sonsabitches, fooled you again.
Bertie once asked Henry why he never put a stop to it.
'I'll tell you,' Henry said. 'A few years back the Air Force wanted twenty million dollars to rig up a flyin' model of an airplane they had planned out. Well, it cost them seventy-five million and then the damn thing wouldn't fly. That happened ten years ago, when blind Eddie and myself were considerable younger, and I voted for the woman who sponsored that bill. Blind Eddie voted against her. And -since then I've been buyin' his bread.'