Kategori: Story

In the northern part of Austin there once dwelt an honest family by the name of Smothers. The family consisted of John Smothers, his wife, himself, their little daughter, five years of age, and her parents, making six people toward the population of the city when counted for a special write-up, but only three by actual count.

One night after supper the little girl was seized with a severe colic, and John Smothers hurried down town to get some medicine.

He never came back.

The little girl recovered and in time grew up to womanhood.

The mother grieved very much over her husband’s disappearance, and it was nearly three months before she married again, and moved to San Antonio.

The little girl also married in time, and after a few years had rolled around, she also had a little girl five years of age.

She still lived in the same house where they dwelt when her father had left and never returned.

One night by a remarkable coincidence her little girl was taken with cramp colic on the anniversary of the disappearance of John Smothers, who would now have been her grandfather if he had been alive and had a steady job.

“I will go downtown and get some medicine for her,” said John Smith (for it was none other than he whom she had married).

“No, no, dear John,” cried his wife. “You, too, might disappear forever, and then forget to come back.”

So John Smith did not go, and together they sat by the bedside of little Pansy (for that was Pansy’s name).

After a little Pansy seemed to grow worse, and John Smith again attempted to go for medicine, but his wife would not let him.

Suddenly the door opened, and an old man, stooped and bent, with long white hair, entered the room.

“Hello, here is grandpa,” said Pansy. She had recognized him before any of the others.

The old man drew a bottle of medicine from his pocket and gave Pansy a spoonful.

She got well immediately.

“I was a little late,” said John Smothers, “as I waited for a street car.”

When Narcissus died the pool of his pleasure changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, and the Oreads came weeping through the woodland that they might sing to the pool and give it comfort.

And when they saw that the pool had changed from a cup of sweet waters into a cup of salt tears, they loosened the green tresses of their hair and cried to the pool and said, `We do not wonder that you should mourn in this manner for Narcissus, so beautiful was he.’

`But was Narcissus beautiful?’ said the pool.

`Who should know that better than you?’ answered the Oreads. `Us did he ever pass by, but you he sought for, and would lie on your banks and look down at you, and in the mirror of your waters he would mirror his own beauty.’

And the pool answered, `But I loved Narcissus because, as he lay on my banks and looked down at me, in the mirror of his eyes I saw ever my own beauty mirrored.’

“Oh, dear! oh, dear! It’s snowing!”

“Hurrah! hurrah! It’s snowing!”

Massachusetts looked up from her algebra. She was the head of the school. She was rosy and placid as the apple she was generally eating when not in class. Apples and algebra were the things she cared most about in school life.

“Whence come these varying cries?” she said, taking her feet off the fender and trying to be interested, though her thoughts went on with “a 1/6 b =” etc.

“Oh, Virginia is grumbling because it is snowing, and Maine is feeling happy over it, that’s all!” said Rhode Island, the smallest girl in Miss Wayland’s school.

“Poor Virginia! It is rather hard on you to have snow in March, when you have just got your box of spring clothes from home.”

“It is atrocious!” said Virginia, a tall, graceful, languishing girl. “How could they send me to such a place, where it is winter all the spring? Why, at home the violets are in blossom, the trees are coming out, the birds singing–”

“And at home,” broke in Maine, who was a tall girl, too, but lithe and breezy as a young willow, with flyaway hair and dancing brown eyes, “at home all is winter–white, beautiful, glorious winter, with ice two or three feet thick on the rivers, and great fields and fields of snow, all sparkling in the sun, and the sky a vast sapphire overhead, without a speck. Oh, the glory of it, the splendor of it! And here–here it is neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red herring. A wretched, makeshift season, which they call winter because they don’t know what else to call it.”

“Come! come!” said Old New York, who was seventeen years old and had her own ideas of dignity. “Let us alone, you two outsiders! We are neither Eskimos nor Hindoos, it is true, but the Empire State would not change climates with either of you.”

“No, indeed!” chimed in Young New York, who always followed her leader in everything, from opinions down to hair-ribbons.

“No, indeed!” repeated Virginia, with languid scorn. “Because you couldn’t get any one to change with you, my dear.”

Young New York reddened. “You are so disagreeable, Virginia!” she said. “I am sure I am glad I don’t have to live with you all the year round–”

“Personal remarks!” said Massachusetts, looking up calmly. “One cent, Young New York, for the missionary fund. Thank you! Let me give you each half an apple, and you will feel better.”

She solemnly divided a large red apple, and gave the halves to the two scowling girls, who took them, laughing in spite of themselves, and went their separate ways.

“Why didn’t you let them have it out, Massachusetts?” said Maine, laughing. “You never let any one have a good row.”

“Slang!” said Massachusetts, looking up again. “One cent for the missionary fund. You will clothe the heathen at this rate, Maine. That is the fourth cent to-day.”

“‘Row’ isn’t slang!” protested Maine, feeling, however, for her pocket-book.

“Vulgar colloquial!” returned Massachusetts, quietly. “And perhaps you would go away now, Maine, or else be quiet. Have you learned–”

“No, I haven’t!” said Maine. “I will do it very soon, dear Saint Apple. I must look at the snow a little more.”

Maine went dancing off to her room, where she threw the window open and looked out with delight. The girl caught up a double handful and tossed it about, laughing for pure pleasure. Then she leaned out to feel the beating of the flakes on her face.

“Really quite a respectable little snowstorm!” she said, nodding approval at the whirling white drift. “Go on, and you will be worth while, my dear.” She went singing to her algebra, which she could not have done if it had not been snowing.

The snow went on increasing from hour to hour. By noon the wind began to rise; before night it was blowing a furious gale. Furious blasts clutched at the windows, and rattled them like castanets. The wind howled and shrieked and moaned, till it seemed as if the air were filled with angry demons fighting to possess the square white house.

Many of the pupils of Miss Wayland’s school came to the tea-table with disturbed faces; but Massachusetts was as calm as usual, and Maine was jubilant.

“Isn’t it a glorious storm?” she cried, exultingly. “I didn’t know there could be such a storm in this part of the country, Miss Wayland. Will you give me some milk, please?”

“There is no milk, my dear,” said Miss Wayland, who looked rather troubled. “The milkman has not come, and probably will not come to-night. There has never been such a storm here in my lifetime!” she added. “Do you have such storms at home, my dear?”

“Oh, yes, indeed!” Maine said, cheerfully. “I don’t know that we often have so much wind as this, but the snow is nothing out of the way. Why, on Palm Sunday last year our milkman dug through a drift twenty feet deep to get at his cows. He was the only milkman who ventured out, and he took me and the minister’s wife to church in his little red pung.

“We were the only women in church, I remember. Miss Betsy Follansbee, who had not missed going to church in fifteen years, started on foot, after climbing out of her bedroom window to the shed roof and sliding down. All her doors were blocked up, and she lived alone, so there was no one to dig her out. But she got stuck in a drift about half-way, and had to stay there till one of the neighbors came by and pulled her out.”

All the girls laughed at this, and even Miss Wayland smiled; but suddenly she looked grave again.

“Hark!” she said, and listened. “Did you not hear something?”

“We hear Boreas, Auster, Eurus, and Zephyrus,” answered Old New York. “Nothing else.”

At that moment there was a lull in the screeching of the wind; all listened intently, and a faint sound was heard from without which was not that of the blast.

“A child!” said Massachusetts, rising quickly. “It is a child’s voice. I will go, Miss Wayland.”

“I cannot permit it, Alice!” cried Miss Wayland, in great distress. “I cannot allow you to think of it. You are just recovering from a severe cold, and I am responsible to your parents. What shall we do? It certainly sounds like a child crying out in the pitiless storm. Of course it may be a cat–”

Maine had gone to the window at the first alarm, and now turned with shining eyes.

“It is a child!” she said, quietly. “I have no cold, Miss Wayland. I am going, of course.”

Passing by Massachusetts, who had started out of her usual calm and stood in some perplexity, she whispered, “If it were freezing, it wouldn’t cry. I shall be in time. Get a ball of stout twine.”

She disappeared. In three minutes she returned, dressed in her blanket coat, reaching half-way below her knees, scarlet leggings and gaily wrought moccasins; on her head a fur cap, with a band of sea-otter fur projecting over her eyes. In her hand she held a pair of snow-shoes. She had had no opportunity to wear her snow-shoeing suit all winter, and she was quite delighted.

“My child!” said Miss Wayland, faintly. “How can I let you go? My duty to your parents–what are those strange things, and what use are you going to make of them?”

By way of answer Maine slipped her feet into the snow-shoes, and, with Massachusetts’ aid, quickly fastened the thongs.

“The twine!” she said. “Yes, that will do; plenty of it. Tie it to the door-handle, square knot, so! I’m all right, dear; don’t worry.” Like a flash the girl was gone out into the howling night.

Miss Wayland wrung her hands and wept, and most of the girls wept with her. Virginia, who was curled up in a corner, really sick with fright, beckoned to Massachusetts.

“Is there any chance of her coming back alive?” she asked, in a whisper. “I wish I had made up with her. But we may all die in this awful storm.”

“Nonsense!” said Massachusetts. “Try to have a little sense, Virginia! Maine is all right, and can take care of herself; and as for whimpering at the wind, when you have a good roof over your head, it is too absurd.”

For the first time since she came to school Massachusetts forgot the study hour, as did every one else; and in spite of her brave efforts at cheerful conversation, it was a sad and an anxious group that sat about the fire in the pleasant parlor.

Maine went out quickly, and closed the door behind her; then stood still a moment, listening for the direction of the cry. She did not hear it at first, but presently it broke out–a piteous little wail, sounding louder now in the open air. The girl bent her head to listen. Where was the child? The voice came from the right, surely! She would make her way down to the road, and then she could tell better.

Grasping the ball of twine firmly, she stepped forward, planting the broad snow-shoes lightly in the soft, dry snow. As she turned the corner of the house an icy blast caught her, as if with furious hands, shook her like a leaf, and flung her roughly against the wall.

Her forehead struck the corner, and for a moment she was stunned; but the blood trickling down her face quickly brought her to herself. She set her teeth, folded her arms tightly, and stooping forward, measured her strength once more with that of the gale.

This time it seemed as if she were cleaving a wall of ice, which opened only to close behind her. On she struggled, unrolling her twine as she went.

The child’s cry sounded louder, and she took fresh heart. Pausing, she clapped her hand to her mouth repeatedly, uttering a shrill, long call. It was the Indian whoop, which her father had taught her in their woodland rambles at home.

The childish wail stopped; she repeated the cry louder and longer; then shouted, at the top of her lungs, “Hold on! Help is coming!”

Again and again the wind buffeted her, and forced her backward a step or two; but she lowered her head, and wrapped her arms more tightly about her body, and plodded on.

Once she fell, stumbling over a stump; twice she ran against a tree, for the white darkness was absolutely blinding, and she saw nothing, felt nothing but snow, snow. At last her snow-shoe struck something hard. She stretched out her hands–it was the stone wall. And now, as she crept along beside it, the child’s wail broke out again close at hand.

“Mother! O mother! mother!”

The girl’s heart beat fast.

“Where are you?” she cried. At the same moment she stumbled against something soft. A mound of snow, was it? No! for it moved. It moved and cried, and little hands clutched her dress.

She saw nothing, but put her hands down, and touched a little cold face. She dragged the child out of the snow, which had almost covered it, and set it on its feet.

“Who are you?” she asked, putting her face down close, while by vigorous patting and rubbing she tried to give life to the benumbed, cowering little figure, which staggered along helplessly, clutching her with half-frozen fingers.

“Benny Withers!” sobbed the child. “Mother sent me for the clothes, but I can’t get ’em!”

“Benny Withers!” cried Maine. “Why, you live close by. Why didn’t you go home, child?”

“I can’t!” cried the boy. “I can’t see nothing. I tried to get to the school, an’ I tried to get home, an’ I can’t get nowhere ‘cept against this wall. Let me stay here now! I want to rest me a little.”

He would have sunk down again, but Maine caught him up in her strong, young arms.

“Here, climb up on my back, Benny!” she said, cheerfully. “Hold on tight round my neck, and you shall rest while I take you home. So! That’s a brave boy! Upsy, now! there you are! Now put your head on my shoulder–close! and hold on!”

Ah! how Maine blessed the heavy little brother at home, who would ride on his sister’s back, long after mamma said he was too big. How she blessed the carryings up and down stairs, the “horsey rides” through the garden and down the lane, which had made her shoulders strong!

Benny Withers was eight years old, but he was small and slender, and no heavier than six-year-old Philip. No need of telling the child to hold on, once he was up out of the cruel snow bed. He clung desperately round the girl’s neck, and pressed his head close against the woollen stuff.

Maine pulled her ball of twine from her pocket–fortunately it was a large one, and the twine, though strong, was fine, so that there seemed to be no end to it–and once more lowered her head, and set her teeth, and moved forward, keeping close to the wall, in the direction of Mrs. Withers’s cottage.

For awhile she saw nothing, when she looked up under the fringe of otter fur, which, long and soft, kept the snow from blinding her; nothing but the white, whirling drift which beat with icy, stinging blows in her face. But at last her eyes caught a faint glimmer of light, and presently a brighter gleam showed her Mrs. Withers’s gray cottage, now white like the rest of the world.

Bursting open the cottage door, she almost threw the child into the arms of his mother.

The woman, who had been weeping wildly, could hardly believe her eyes. She caught the little boy and smothered him with kisses, chafing his cold hands, and crying over him.

“I didn’t know!” she said. “I didn’t know till he was gone. I told him at noon he was to go, never thinking ‘twould be like this. I was sure he was lost and dead, but I couldn’t leave my sick baby. Bless you, whoever you are, man or woman! But stay and get warm, and rest ye! You’re never going out again in this awful storm!”

But Maine was gone.

In Miss Wayland’s parlor the suspense was fast becoming unendurable. They had heard Maine’s Indian whoop, and some of them, Miss Wayland herself among the number, thought it was a cry of distress; but Massachusetts rightly interpreted the call, and assured them that it was a call of encouragement to the bewildered child.

Then came silence within the house, and a prolonged clamor–a sort of witches’ chorus, with wailing and shrieking without. Once a heavy branch was torn from one of the great elms, and came thundering down on the roof. This proved the finishing touch for poor Virginia. She went into violent hysterics, and was carried off to bed by Miss Way land and Old New York.

Massachusetts presently ventured to explore a little. She hastened through the hall to the front door, opened it a few inches, and put her hand on the twine which was fastened to the handle. What was her horror to find that it hung loose, swinging idly in the wind! Sick at heart, she shut the door, and pressing her hands over her eyes, tried to think.

Maine must be lost in the howling storm! She must find her; but where and how?

Oh! if Miss Wayland had only let her go at first! She was older; it would not have mattered so much.

But now, quick! she would wrap herself warmly, and slip out without any one knowing.

The girl was turning to fly up-stairs, when suddenly something fell heavily against the door outside. There was a fumbling for the handle; the next moment it flew open, and something white stumbled into the hall, shut the door, and sat down heavily on the floor.

“Personal–rudeness!” gasped Maine, struggling for breath. “You shut the door in my face! One cent for the missionary fund.”

The great storm was over. The sun came up, and looked down on a strange, white world. No fences, no walls; only a smooth ridge where one of these had been. Trees which the day before had been quite tall now looked like dwarfs, spreading their broad arms not far from the snow carpet beneath them. Road there was none; all was smooth, save where some huge drift nodded its crest like a billow curling for its downward rush.

Maine, spite of her scarred face, which showed as many patches as that of a court lady in King George’s times, was jubilant. Tired! not a bit of it! A little stiff, just enough to need “limbering out,” as they said at home.

“There is no butter!” she announced at breakfast. “There is no milk, no meat for dinner. Therefore, I go a-snow-shoeing. Dear Miss Wayland, let me go! I have learned my algebra, and I shall be discovering unknown quantities at every step, which will be just as instructive.”

Miss Wayland could refuse nothing to the heroine of last night’s adventure. Behold Maine, therefore, triumphant, sallying forth, clad once more in her blanket suit, and dragging her sled behind her.

There was no struggling now–no hand-to-hand wrestling with storm-demons. The sun laughed from a sky as blue and deep as her own sky of Maine, and the girl laughed with him as she walked along, the powdery snow flying in a cloud from her snow-shoes at every step.

Such a sight had never been seen in Mentor village before. The people came running to their upper windows–their lower ones were for the most part buried in snow–and stared with all their eyes at the strange apparition.

In the street, life was beginning to stir. People had found, somewhat to their own surprise, that they were alive and well after the blizzard; and knots of men were clustered here and there, discussing the storm, while some were already at work tunnelling through the drifts.

Mr. Perkins, the butcher, had just got his door open, and great was his amazement when Maine hailed him from the top of a great drift, and demanded a quarter of mutton with some soup meat.

“Yes, miss!” he stammered, open-mouthed with astonishment. “I–I’ve got the meat; but I wasn’t–my team isn’t out this morning. I don’t know about sending it.”

“I have a ‘team’ here!” said Maine, quietly, pulling her sled alongside. “Give me the mutton, Mr. Perkins; you may charge it to Miss Wayland, please, and I will take it home.”

The butter-man and the grocer were visited in the same way, and Maine, rather embarrassed by the concentrated observation of the whole village, turned to pull her laden sled back, when suddenly a window was thrown open, and a voice exclaimed:

“Young woman! I will give you ten dollars for the use of those snow-shoes for an hour!”

Maine looked up in amazement, and laughed merrily when she saw the well-known countenance of the village doctor.

“What! You, my dear young lady?” cried the good man. “This is ‘Maine to the Rescue,’ indeed! I might have known it was you. But I repeat my offer. Make it anything you please, only let me have the snow-shoes. I cannot get a horse out, and have two patients dangerously ill. What is your price for the magic shoes?”

“My price, doctor?” repeated Maine, looking up with dancing eyes. “My price is–one cent. For the Missionary Fund! The snow-shoes are yours, and I will get home somehow with my sled and the mutton.”

So she did, and Doctor Fowler made his calls with the snow-shoes, and saved a life, and brought cheer and comfort to many. But it was ten dollars, and not one cent, which he gave to the Missionary Fund.

All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of saying “smart” things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be saying anything at all. Judging by the average published specimens of smart sayings, the rising generation of children are little better than idiots. And the parents must surely be but little better than the children, for in most cases they are the publishers of the sunbursts of infantile imbecility which dazzle us from the pages of our periodicals. I may seem to speak with some heat, not to say a suspicion of personal spite; and I do admit that it nettles me to hear about so many gifted infants in these days, and remember that I seldom said anything smart when I was a child. I tried it once or twice, but it was not popular. The family were not expecting brilliant remarks from me, and so they snubbed me sometimes and spanked me the rest. But it makes my flesh creep and my blood run cold to think what might have happened to me if I had dared to utter some of the smart things of this generation’s “four-year-olds” where my father could hear me. To have simply skinned me alive and considered his duty at an end would have seemed to him criminal leniency toward one so sinning. He was a stern, unsmiling man, and hated all forms of precocity. If I had said some of the things I have referred to, and said them in his hearing, he would have destroyed me. He would, indeed. He would, provided the opportunity remained with him. But it would not, for I would have had judgment enough to take some strychnine first and say my smart thing afterward. The fair record of my life has been tarnished by just one pun. My father overheard that, and he hunted me over four or five townships seeking to take my life. If I had been full-grown, of course he would have been right; but, child as I was, I could not know how wicked a thing I had done.

I made one of those remarks ordinarily called “smart things” before that, but it was not a pun. Still, it came near causing a serious rupture between my father and myself. My father and mother, my uncle Ephraim and his wife, and one or two others were present, and the conversation turned on a name for me. I was lying there trying some India-rubber rings of various patterns, and endeavoring to make a selection, for I was tired of trying to cut my teeth on people’s fingers, and wanted to get hold of something that would enable me to hurry the thing through and get something else. Did you ever notice what a nuisance it was cutting your teeth on your nurse’s finger, or how back-breaking and tiresome it was trying to cut them on your big toe? And did you never get out of patience and wish your teeth were in Jerico long before you got them half cut? To me it seems as if these things happened yesterday. And they did, to some children. But I digress. I was lying there trying the India-rubber rings. I remember looking at the clock and noticing that in an hour and twenty-five minutes I would be two weeks old, and thinking how little I had done to merit the blessings that were so unsparingly lavished upon me. My father said:

“Abraham is a good name. My grandfather was named Abraham.”

My mother said:

“Abraham is a good name. Very well. Let us have Abraham for one of his names.”

I said:

“Abraham suits the subscriber.”

My father frowned, my mother looked pleased; my aunt said:

“What a little darling it is!”

My father said:

“Isaac is a good name, and Jacob is a good name.”

My mother assented, and said:

“No names are better. Let us add Isaac and Jacob to his names.”

I said:

“All right. Isaac and Jacob are good enough for yours truly. Pass me that rattle, if you please. I can’t chew India-rubber rings all day.”

Not a soul made a memorandum of these sayings of mine, for publication. I saw that, and did it myself, else they would have been utterly lost. So far from meeting with a generous encouragement like other children when developing intellectually, I was now furiously scowled upon by my father; my mother looked grieved and anxious, and even my aunt had about her an expression of seeming to think that maybe I had gone too far. I took a vicious bite out of an India-rubber ring, and covertly broke the rattle over the kitten’s head, but said nothing. Presently my father said:

“Samuel is a very excellent name.”

I saw that trouble was coming. Nothing could prevent it. I laid down my rattle; over the side of the cradle I dropped my uncle’s silver watch, the clothes-brush, the toy dog, my tin soldier, the nutmeg-grater, and other matters which I was accustomed to examine, and meditate upon and make pleasant noises with, and bang and batter and break when I needed wholesome entertainment. Then I put on my little frock and my little bonnet, and took my pygmy shoes in one hand and my licorice in the other, and climbed out on the floor. I said to myself, Now, if the worse comes to worst, I am ready. Then I said aloud, in a firm voice:

“Father, I cannot, cannot wear the name of Samuel.”

“My son!”

“Father, I mean it. I cannot.”

“Why?”

“Father, I have an invincible antipathy to that name.”

“My son, this is unreasonable. Many great and good men have been named Samuel.”

“Sir, I have yet to hear of the first instance.”

“What! There was Samuel the prophet. Was not he great and good?”

“Not so very.”

“My son! With His own voice the Lord called him.”

“Yes, sir, and had to call him a couple times before he could come!”

And then I sallied forth, and that stern old man sallied forth after me. He overtook me at noon the following day, and when the interview was over I had acquired the name of Samuel, and a thrashing, and other useful information; and by means of this compromise my father’s wrath was appeased and a misunderstanding bridged over which might have become a permanent rupture if I had chosen to be unreasonable. But just judging by this episode, what would my father have done to me if I had ever uttered in his hearing one of the flat, sickly things these “two-years-olds” say in print nowadays? In my opinion there would have been a case of infanticide in our family.

It was quite by accident I discovered this incredible invasion of Earth by lifeforms from another planet. As yet, I haven’t done anything about it; I can’t think of anything to do. I wrote to the Government, and they sent back a pamphlet on the repair and maintenance of frame houses. Anyhow, the whole thing is known; I’m not the first to discover it. Maybe it’s even under control.

I was sitting in my easy-chair, idly turning the pages of a paperbacked book someone had left on the bus, when I came across the reference that first put me on the trail. For a moment I didn’t respond. It took some time for the full import to sink in. After I’d comprehended, it seemed odd I hadn’t noticed it right away.

The reference was clearly to a nonhuman species of incredible properties, not indigenous to Earth. A species, I hasten to point out, customarily masquerading as ordinary human beings. Their disguise, however, became transparent in the face of the following observations by the author. It was at once obvious the author knew everything. Knew everything–and was taking it in his stride. The line (and I tremble remembering it even now) read:

…his eyes slowly roved about the room.

Vague chills assailed me. I tried to picture the eyes. Did they roll like dimes? The passage indicated not; they seemed to move through the air, not over the surface. Rather rapidly, apparently. No one in the story was surprised. That’s what tipped me off. No sign of amazement at such an outrageous thing. Later the matter was amplified.

…his eyes moved from person to person.

There it was in a nutshell. The eyes had clearly come apart from the rest of him and were on their own. My heart pounded and my breath choked in my windpipe. I had stumbled on an accidental mention of a totally unfamiliar race. Obviously non-Terrestrial. Yet, to the characters in the book, it was perfectly natural–which suggested they belonged to the same species.

And the author? A slow suspicion burned in my mind. The author was taking it rather too easily in his stride. Evidently, he felt this was quite a usual thing. He made absolutely no attempt to conceal this knowledge. The story continued:

…presently his eyes fastened on Julia.

Julia, being a lady, had at least the breeding to feel indignant. She is described as blushing and knitting her brows angrily. At this, I sighed with relief. They weren’t all non-Terrestrials. The narrative continues:

…slowly, calmly, his eyes examined every inch of her.

Great Scott! But here the girl turned and stomped off and the matter ended. I lay back in my chair gasping with horror. My wife and family regarded me in wonder.

“What’s wrong, dear?” my wife asked.

I couldn’t tell her. Knowledge like this was too much for the ordinary run-of-the-mill person. I had to keep it to myself. “Nothing,” I gasped. I leaped up, snatched the book, and hurried out of the room.

In the garage, I continued reading. There was more. Trembling, I read the next revealing passage:

…he put his arm around Julia. Presently she asked him if he would remove his arm. He immediately did so, with a smile.

It’s not said what was done with the arm after the fellow had removed it. Maybe it was left standing upright in the corner. Maybe it was thrown away. I don’t care. In any case, the full meaning was there, staring me right in the face.

Here was a race of creatures capable of removing portions of their anatomy at will. Eyes, arms–and maybe more. Without batting an eyelash. My knowledge of biology came in handy, at this point. Obviously they were simple beings, uni-cellular, some sort of primitive single-celled things. Beings no more developed than starfish. Starfish can do the same thing, you know.

I read on. And came to this incredible revelation, tossed off coolly by the author without the faintest tremor:

…outside the movie theater we split up. Part of us went inside, part over to the cafe for dinner.

Binary fission, obviously. Splitting in half and forming two entities. Probably each lower half went to the cafe, it being farther, and the upper halves to the movies. I read on, hands shaking. I had really stumbled onto something here. My mind reeled as I made out this passage:

…I’m afraid there’s no doubt about it. Poor Bibney has lost his head again.

Which was followed by:

…and Bob says he has utterly no guts.

Yet Bibney got around as well as the next person. The next person, however, was just as strange. He was soon described as:

…totally lacking in brains.

There was no doubt of the thing in the next passage. Julia, whom I had thought to be the one normal person, reveals herself as also being an alien life form, similar to the rest:

…quite deliberately, Julia had given her heart to the young man.

It didn’t relate what the final disposition of the organ was, but I didn’t really care. It was evident Julia had gone right on living in her usual manner, like all the others in the book. Without heart, arms, eyes, brains, viscera, dividing up in two when the occasion demanded. Without a qualm.

…thereupon she gave him her hand.

I sickened. The rascal now had her hand, as well as her heart. I shudder to think what he’s done with them, by this time.

…he took her arm.

Not content to wait, he had to start dismantling her on his own. Flushing crimson, I slammed the book shut and leaped to my feet. But not in time to escape one last reference to those carefree bits of anatomy whose travels had originally thrown me on the track:

…her eyes followed him all the way down the road and across the meadow.

I rushed from the garage and back inside the warm house, as if the accursed things were following me. My wife and children were playing Monopoly in the kitchen. I joined them and played with frantic fervor, brow feverish, teeth chattering.

I had had enough of the thing. I want to hear no more about it. Let them come on. Let them invade Earth. I don’t want to get mixed up in it.

I have absolutely no stomach for it.