Strangers by Mort Castle Read Free Book Online

her only enough air so that her mind functioned for the instant it would take her to realize he was not the patient and understanding husband, not a real life Dagwood Bumstead-Ozzie Nelson-Dad “Leave It To Beaver” Cleaver— that he was a Stranger who was killing her, killing her…
    To get away, he’d made up the noise downstairs.
    “Michael?” Beth’s voice thin and worried, drifted down to him.
    Good, Michael thought. Her fear of the unknown was becoming a greater fear of the imagined. Her loving husband— yours truly— might have met a prowler with a tire iron, a wrench, a knife—might have met Death.
    “Michael! Are you all right?”
    He smiled.
    The dumb bitch did not have to worry, he thought. He was not the one fated to die in the night.
    Quickly and silently, he walked back upstairs. He stopped just before their bedroom door and waited.
    “Michael! Answer me!”
    He knew Beth was no more than a dozen heartbeats away from explosive panic, a shrieking, lights-on, dial-the-police, “Oh, help!” frenzy. He counted his own pulsing heartbeat four times…six…
    He stepped into the bedroom. “Guess it was nothing after all…”
    Beth screamed.
    He raced to her, held her. “Honey, hey, it’s okay…”
    “God, you scared me! I was so…” Beth sobbed. “Oh, God, Michael, I didn’t know what to think, and then suddenly, there you were and…”
    “I’m sorry,” Michael crooned. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. There’s nothing to be afraid of.” And, he thought, I’ll bet there’s nothing you feel like talking about now, is there?
    Beth choked when she tried to turn her tears to relieved laughter. With a sniffle, she said, “It’s okay. I’m fine now.”
    But she had been frightened, so frightened—and the residue of that fear accompanied her into sleep and infused her dream…
     
    Alone, she waited to be punished. It was unfair. She had done nothing wrong.
    She sat in the first seat of the center row, her hands folded on the desk. On the ceiling, the fluorescent lights poured down a cold light as they faintly buzzed, a sound that vibrated down her spine.
    She knew very well where she was—and there had to be a mistake. This was the fourth grade classroom in Belford Community Grade School, the realm of the feared and hated tyrant Miss Kostner. Other teachers in the school administered discipline reluctantly, Miss Kostner, enthusiastically. Other teachers sent kids to the cloakroom or kept them in after school. Miss Kostner had a ruler. “Hold out your hand, please.”
    No! I do not belong here. Beth wanted to tell someone that, to rectify this error in time. She was an adult now and Miss Kostner was a terror consigned to memory. Except somehow she did not feel at all grown up. Despite this adult body cramped at the small desk, she was a child. Her world was divided into zones of safety and security, areas of known fears, and yet darker territories of fears unknown.
    Young, she was young, and leaden with fright.
    Then she understood . This is a dream, only a dream. A dream cannot hurt you.
    But why did the realization bring no lessening of her fear—misery?
    Now she was no longer alone. Her children— But I am a child myself !— was here, Kim in the desk to the left, Marcy at the right. I can see them without moving my head . Feet flat on the floor, hands folded; they sat stiffly as though mocking her.
    And she knew the teacher planned to punish them all.
    Then the teacher appeared at the desk, appeared from nowhere as people can only within a dream. The teacher was not Miss Kostner.
    Michael was the teacher. He was smiling.
    He would be the one to inflict punishment and she knew there was nothing she could do to prevent him.
    Michael summoned her with a nod. In the eternity it took to walk from her desk to him, she watched the transformation. It was a surprise, but it had the feeling of something that made perfect, irrefutable sense.
    Michael’s face lost its familiarity. He might