The Stories of Ray Bradbury by Ray Bradbury Read Free Book Online Page A

‘If I thought —’
    Mother talked on, casual quiet. ‘Of course she’s not in me, here. And if she was there’d be no way to tell.’ Her eyes gleamed with a delicate malice. She stood tall and graceful, looking upon him with no fear. ‘Now, suppose you explain what you want with her?’
    He seemed to be listening to a distant bell, tolling. He shook his head, angrily, to clear it. Then he growled. ‘Something…inside me…’ He broke off. He leaned over the cold, sleeping body. ‘Cecy! Come back, you hear! You can come back if you want!’
    The wind blew softly through the high willows outside the sundrifted windows. The bed creaked under his shifted weight. The distant bell tolled again and he was listening to it, but Mother could not hear it. Only he heard the drowsy summer-day sounds of it, far far away. His mouth opened obscurely:
    ‘I’ve a thing for her to do to me. For the past month I’ve been kind of going—insane. I get funny thoughts. I was going to take a train to the big city and talk to a psychiatrist but he wouldn’t help. I know that Cecy can enter my head and exorcise those fears I have. She can suck them out like a vacuum cleaner, if she wants to help me. She’s the only one can scrape away the filth and cobwebs and make me new again. That’swhy I need her, you understand?’ he said, in a tight, expectant voice. He licked his lips. ‘She’s got to help me!’
    ‘After all you’ve done to the Family?’ said Mother.
    ‘I did nothing to the Family!’
    ‘The story goes,’ said Mother, ‘that in bad times, when you needed money, you were paid a hundred dollars for each of the Family you pointed out to the law to be staked through the heart.’
    ‘That’s unfair!’ he said, wavering like a man hit in the stomach. ‘You can’t prove that. You lie!’
    ‘Nevertheless, I don’t think Cecy’d want to help you. The Family wouldn’t want it.’
    ‘Family, Family!’ He stomped the floor like a huge, brutal child. ‘Damn the Family! I won’t go insane on their account! I need help. God damn it, and I’ll get it!’
    Mother faced him, her face reserved, her hands crossed over her bosom.
    He lowered his voice, looking at her with a kind of evil shyness, not meeting her eyes. ‘Listen to me, Mrs Elliott,’ he said. ‘And you, too, Cecy,’ he said to the sleeper. ‘If you’re there,’ he added. ‘Listen to this.’ He looked at the wall clock ticking on the far, sun-drenched wall. ‘If Cecy isn’t back here by six o’clock tonight, ready to help clean out my mind and make me sane, I’ll—I’ll go to the police.’ He drew himself up. ‘I’ve got a list of Elliotts who live on farms all around and inside Mellin Town. The police can cut enough new cedar stakes in an hour to drive through a dozen Elliott hearts.’ He stopped, wiped the sweat off his face. He stood, listening.
    The distant bell began to toll again.
    He had heard it for weeks. There was no bell, but he could hear it ringing. It rang now, near, far, close, away. Nobody else could hear it save himself.
    He shook his head. He shouted to cover the sound of those bells, shouted at Mrs Elliott. ‘You heard me?’
    He hitched up his trousers, tightened the buckle clasp with a jerk, walked past Mother to the door.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard. But even I can’t call Cecy back if she doesn’t want to come. She’ll arrive eventually. Be patient. Don’t go running off to the police—’
    He cut her. ‘I can’t wait. This thing of mine, this noise in my head’s gone on eight weeks now! I can’t stand it much longer!’ He scowled at the clock. ‘I’m going. I’ll try to find Cecy in town. If I don’t get her by six—well, you know what a cedar stake’s like…’
    His heavy shoes pounded away down the hall, fading down the stairs, out of the house. When the noises were all gone, the mother turned and looked, earnestly, painfully, down upon the sleeper.
    ‘Cecy,’ she called, softly,