Someone Is Bleeding by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page B

the shower that I met Albert in the hall.”
    “You came right here?”
    “I stopped to call Jim.”
    “He didn’t stay with you?” I asked, inanely.
    She looked slightly surprised. “Of course he didn’t,” she said, “he just wanted to find out what had happened tonight. He said you called him.”
    “Yes.”
    “Why?”
    “I thought maybe you were at his house. I thought maybe it was Steig who had . . .”
    * * *
    We drove back to her place in the morning.
    “Well, I’ll just tell Jim,” she was saying. ‘He’ll get rid of Steig if I tell him.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Of course, Davie,” she said, “you’re his friend, aren’t you?”
    “I doubt it.”
    “Davie.”
    Then I said, “I still think you should move out today. Stay with me one more night. But, my God, don’t spend another night there with Albert.”
    “I won’t,” she said.
    She shook her head then. And her throat moved nervously. “We’ll just pick up your things,” I said, “You don’t even have to go in the house.”
    As we drove up to the house and I parked behind the Dodge, Peggy’s face got suddenly pale.
    “Baby, it’s all right,” I said.
    I got out. She got out too.
    “Baby, stay here,” I said. “You don’t have to go in.”
    “No,” she said, “I’ll come in.”
    “Well . . . all right.”
    We went up the walk together. I felt in myself that if Albert were there and he said a word to me, I’d knock him down and step on his face. The victimizing by Steig the night before had given me a tight, vicious temper.
    The front door was open. We went into the living room.
    “Is Mrs. Grady home?” I whispered.
    “I guess so,” she said.
    We went into the hall. She went into her room and I followed. Then as she turned to close the door I heard her voice sink to a whisper.
    “Davie . . .”
    I looked in the direction she was looking. Down at where Albert’s room was. My heart jumped. There was a body sprawled on the floor.
    I broke into a run and pushed open the half-open door. I heard Peggy behind me.
    Mrs. Grady was crumpled on the floor. Her white face was pointed at the ceiling. In her right hand she clutched something. I couldn’t see what it was but the tip was red . . .
    Then my eyes moved suddenly to the bed.
    Albert was there. He was staring at us, his eyes were wide open.
    Albert was no more. And that was when I recognized the instrument in Mrs. Grady’s hand.
    An icepick.
    It had been driven into Albert’s brain.

Chapter Three
    Lieutenant Jones, Homicide, was a broad man with horn-rimmed glasses. His mood was surly.
    Mrs. Grady was giving her version of what had happened. “I went in to call him for breakfast,” she said. “I found him in there with that—that thing in his . . .”
    “Why did you take it out?”
    She shook her head. Then suddenly she twisted her head and pointed a shaky finger at Peggy.
    “She did it!” she said wildly. “I know it, I know she did it!”
    I sat beside Peggy on the big flowered couch, afraid to look at her.
    “That will do,” Jones said.
    “Do! My husband is dead. He’s killed! Do you understand that? Are you going to let her get away with it?”
    “I know he was killed, Mrs. Grady,” Jones said. “We’re trying to find out who did it as soon as possible. If you’ll just help us and not throw around accusations.”
    I sat there numbly staring at him. Listening to the murmur of voices in Albert’s room, the muffled pop of flash bulbs, the shuffling of feet.
    I kept visualizing Albert lying in there, the icepick hole in his head—and the other. It was almost unbearable to think about the other. Whoever had driven the icepick into Albert’s brain had also taken Albert’s straight razor and made an enormous bloody slit around Albert’s neck. It was long, nearly the whole circumference of the neck. And it was deep. It was almost as if . . .
    As if . . . and I wanted to be sick.
    “Miss Lister?” Jones said.
    “Y-yes?”
    “You were out last