The Mind Thing

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Gadardene swine…” Doc said musingly. “They sound familiar, but I’m afraid I can’t place them.”

“In the Bible,” Miss Talley said. “Book of Luke, I think. Christ came upon a man who was possessed by devils, and ordered them to leave him. There was a herd of swine nearby. Let’s see; I think I can quote the crucial verse: ‘Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked.’ ”

Doc groaned softly. “Miss Talley, don’t tell me you believe in demoniac possession. Please.”

“Of course I don’t. That is, I don’t believe in demons. But possession—”

“Possession by what, then? I’m a materialist, Miss Talley. I’ll admit that the Rhine experiments and some other things have shaken me just a little bit, enough so I don’t dogmatically deny the possibility of wild talents like telepathy and telekinesis. And of course hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestion are fully accepted scientifically. But not even the wildest enthusiast for parapsychology has suggested that one mind can take over another and control it from inside.”

“One human mind,” said Miss Talley firmly. “There are billions of planets besides Earth in the universe, and millions of them must be inhabited. How do we know what capabilities and limitations a non-human mind might have? How do we know what an alien, an extraterrestrial, might be able to do?”

“Hmmm,” said Doc. Wondering for a moment if Miss Talley was joking, he moved his head far enough to be able to see her face in the rear vision mirror. Her eyes looked excited, the rest of her face was calm.

She said, “Aren’t we working right now to get men onto other planets? What makes you think we’re the most advanced race in the universe? How do you know there isn’t an alien here?”

“Hmmm,” said Doc. “I suppose I don’t, but then again I don’t know that there is. But why an alien, instead of aliens?”

“Because only one person or animal has been—I’ll call it possessed, for lack of a better word—at a time. The field mouse, then Tommy after the field mouse was dead, the hound after Tommy was dead, the owl after the hound was dead, the cat— You see what I mean, Doctor. Never two at any one time. And that’s why he makes his hosts commit suicide, so he can get his mind back out of them and be free to take a different host.”

Something seemed to prickle between Doc’s shoulder blades. But he said, “You certainly have an imagination, Miss Talley. Possibly I should read science fiction instead of mysteries.”

“Possibly you should. But with what’s happening, possibly you won’t have to, to have your imagination stimulated. If there is a cat at your place, maybe it’s host to an alien who was spying on us. You might ask him.”

Doc laughed. “And then kill the cat so the alien can take me over, eh? If that happens, I’ll let you know, Miss Talley.”

But after he’d dropped her off at her little house, his expression was thoughtful and a little worried as he drove home. It was ridiculous, of course, but what if—?

He let himself in the door carefully, making sure nothing got out past him. He saw nothing, heard nothing, out of the ordinary.

He leaned against the inside of the door, filled his pipe with tobacco and lighted it.

He went into the living room and sat down in his favorite chair, a leather upholstered Morris. Backed against the biggest window and with a lamp standing beside it, it afforded excellent light for reading either by day or by night. A paper-back mystery novel lay open on one arm of the chair, but he didn’t pick it up.

Should he search the house? It would be a long and tedious job to look everywhere a cat might hide. And besides, down-stairs here an intelligent cat wouldn’t even have to hide, since there was no door in the doorway between living room and kitchen, or in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway that led to the front door and back to the living room again. It could simply move from room to room ahead of him and stay out of his sight that way. Right now it could be sitting in the kitchen. And if it heard him heading that way it could come back here by way of the hall—or through the kitchen-living room door if he went by the hallway. It could move more silently than he could and would have better hearing.

That is, if there was a cat.

And if there was, why shouldn’t it be a perfectly ordinary cat, here for perfectly good catlike reasons? Well… certainly it wasn’t very usual for a cat to enter a house, without good reason at least, by making what must have been a fairly dangerous jump from a tree branch to an upstairs window. And another thing, why would it keep itself so well and thoroughly hidden for so long, all the time he’d been dictating?

His pipe had burned out and he knocked the dottle out of it and wondered if he should get himself something to eat, or drive into town for something. Somehow he didn’t feel like making dinner for himself.

But the cat…?

Suddenly he thought of a way of telling, on return, whether or not there was a cat here in the house—at least, if it moved around and didn’t stay hidden in one place. Along with the pots and pans in one of the cupboards there was a flour sifter; he’d used it a few times to flour fish when he was going to fry them. He got it now and put a little flour in it. Then he went to the foot of the stairs and over the bottom few steps scattered a thin, almost invisible film of flour, not turning the handle of the sifter but merely tapping the side of it lightly with one finger as he moved it. He did the same thing in the middle of the hallway, and at the doorway between the living room and the kitchen.

Then, so he wouldn’t have to walk through any of the cat-traps he had just set, he left by the back door and drove into town.

He ate at the place where he knew he’d be served by the most talkative waitress in town. She lived up to her billing—but there was no new suicide, nothing new in the form of strange actions of either wild or domestic animals. The most exciting thing that had happened in the past twenty-four hours had been a fire at Smalley’s Feed Store; the damage had been slight and the cause had been traced to defective wiring.

No pigs had sprouted wings; no dogs had been seen climbing telephone poles. He’d asked about those points specifically, not so much to get a laugh—although he had—but because they’d make her remember if she had heard any stories about animals behaving unnaturally.

He was heading for his car when someone called out “Hey, Staunton.” It was Dr. Gruen, and he came closer so he wouldn’t have to yell the rest of what he had to say. “Getting a little poker game and we need one more sucker. How’s about it?”

“Well,” Doc said, “guess I can sit in an hour or two. Back room at the tavern?”

Gruen nodded. “I’m going over to get Lem. We’ll be starting in about fifteen minutes.”

“Good,” Doc said. “Just time for me to get a spot of fortification at the bar. See you when you get there.”

Time can be subjective; a few minutes in a dentist’s chair can be longer than a few hours in a good poker game. Doc played what he thought was a short time and suddenly realized, when they quit playing, that it was almost midnight. And also that he was hungry again; but both of the Bartlesville restaurants would be closed by now; he would have to wait till he got home and then make himself a sandwich.

At the house he parked his car in the yard and was almost at the door before he remembered that, unless Miss Talley had had a momentary hallucination, there was a cat in his house.

He let himself in by way of the kitchen door, being careful that nothing got past him. The moonlight was so bright that, until he closed the kitchen door, he could not possibly have missed seeing anything as large as a mouse. He heard no sound.

He flicked on the kitchen light and looked around. He remembered the flour he had sprinkled on the floor and walked over to the doorway.

There were cat tracks in the flour.

He called out, “All right, Cat. Show yourself if you want anything to eat or drink. I’m not going to hunt for you, but you’re not getting out of here till I’ve met you.”

He went to the refrigerator and opened it. He got out the necessary ingredients and made himself a ham sandwich and took it and a bottle of beer over to the table and sat down.

He did a lot of thinking while he ate the sandwich slowly and sipped the beer. He didn’t think he liked what he was thinking. He was frightened, without knowing what he was frightened about. He knew that he didn’t want to turn out the kitchen lights and go upstairs to bed in the dark. Although he knew the house so well by now that he seldom used his flashlight, he got it from a cupboard drawer. He had it in his hand and turned on when he flicked off the kitchen light.

He played it ahead of him as he went through the hallway and up the steps. He felt foolish doing it (how could a cat harm him?) but he did it just the same.

He saw nothing in the hall or on the stairs. In his bedroom he closed the door before he turned on the light and then, using the flashlight to help him, he searched the room thoroughly. This time he looked under the bed.

Wherever the cat was, it wasn’t in this room. And, harmless and ordinary though it might be, it wasn’t going to get in while he was sleeping. Luckily it was not a warm night and he would do without ventilation for once by sleeping with both the door and the window closed. Not, in the case of the window, because the cat could get through it from wherever it now was; but the cat must have got into the house that way in the first place, and what else might decide to come that way?

For some strange reason he wished he’d brought one of his guns upstairs with him.

But eventually he slept, and slept soundly.