Short Fiction - R. A. Lafferty (i can read book club .txt) 📗

disappeared before witnesses. This was serious.

Some mean-looking investigators from downtown came out to the Willoughbys. The meanest-looking one was the mayor. In happier days he had not been a mean man, but the terror had now reigned for seven days.

“There have been ugly rumors,” said one of the mean investigators, “that link certain events to this household. Do any of you know anything about them?”

“I started most of them,” said Clarissa. “But I didn’t consider them ugly. Cryptic, rather. But if you want to get to the bottom of this just ask me a question.”

“Did you make those things disappear?” asked the investigator.

“That isn’t the question,” said Clarissa.

“Do you know where they have gone?” asked the investigator.

“That isn’t the question either,” said Clarissa.

“Can you make them come back?”

“Why, of course I can. Anybody can. Can’t you?”

“I cannot. If you can, please do so at once.”

“I need some stuff. Get me a gold watch and a hammer. Then go down to the drug store and get me this list of chemicals. And I need a yard of black velvet and a pound of rock candy.”

“Shall we?” asked one of the investigators.

“Yes,” said the mayor, “it’s our only hope. Get her anything she wants.”

And it was all assembled.

“Why does she get all the attention?” asked Clarence. “I was the one that made all the things disappear. How does she know how to get them back?”

“I knew it!” cried Clarissa with hate. “I knew he was the one that did it. He read in my diary how to make a disappearer. If I was his mother I’d whip him for reading his little sister’s diary. That’s what happens when things like that fall into irresponsible hands.”

She poised the hammer over the gold watch of the mayor on the floor.

“I have to wait a few seconds. This can’t be hurried. It’ll be only a little while.”

The second hand swept around to the point that was preordained for it before the world began. Clarissa suddenly brought down the hammer with all her force on the beautiful gold watch.

“That’s all,” she said. “Your troubles are over. See, there is Blanche Manners’ cat on the sidewalk just where she was seven days ago.”

And the cat was back.

“Now let’s go down to the Plugged Nickel and watch the fire plug come back.”

They had only a few minutes to wait. It came from nowhere and clanged into the street like a sign and a witness.

“Now I predict,” said Clarissa, “that every single object will return exactly seven days from the time of its disappearance.”

The seven-day terror had ended. The objects began to reappear.

“How,” asked the mayor, “did you know they would come back in seven days?”

“Because it was a seven-day disappearer that Clarence made. I also know how to make a nine-day, a thirteen-day, a twenty-seven-day, and an eleven-year disappearer. I was going to make a thirteen-day one, but for that you have to color the ends with the blood from a little boy’s heart, and Cyril cried every time I tried to make a good cut.”

“You really know how to make all of these?”

“Yes. But I shudder if the knowledge should ever come into unauthorized hands.”

“I shudder too, Clarissa. But tell me, why did you want the chemicals?”

“For my chemistry set.”

“And the black velvet?”

“For doll dresses.”

“And the pound of rock candy?”

“How did you ever get to be mayor of this town if you have to ask questions like that? What do you think I wanted the rock candy for?”

“One last question,” said the mayor. “Why did you smash my gold watch with the hammer?”

“Oh,” said Clarissa, “that was for dramatic effect.”

Dream World

He was a morning type, so it was unusual that he should feel depressed in the morning. He tried to account for it, and could not.

He was a healthy man, so he ate a healthy breakfast. He was not too depressed for that. And he listened unconsciously to the dark girl with the musical voice. Often she ate at Cahill’s in the mornings with her girl friend.

Grape juice, pineapple juice, orange juice, apple juice⁠ ⁠… why did people look at him suspiciously just because he took four or five sorts of juice for breakfast?

“Agnes, it was ghastly. I was built like a sack. A sackful of skunk cabbage, I swear. And I was a green-brown color and had hair like a latrine mop. Agnes, I was sick with misery. It just isn’t possible for anybody to feel so low. I can’t shake it at all. And the whole world was like the underside of a log. It wasn’t that, though. It wasn’t just one bunch of things. It was everything. It was a world where things just weren’t worth living. I can’t come out of it.⁠ ⁠…”

“Teresa, it was only a dream.”

Sausage, only four little links for an order. Did people think he was a glutton because he had four orders of sausage? It didn’t seem like very much.

“My mother was a monster. She was a warthoggish animal. And yet she was still recognizable. How could my mother look like a warthog and still look like my mother? Mama’s pretty!”

“Teresa, it was only a dream. Forget it.”

The stares a man must suffer just to get a dozen pancakes on his plate! What was the matter with people who called four pancakes a tall stack? And what was odd about ordering a quarter of a pound of butter? It was better than having twenty of those little pats each on its coaster.

“Agnes, we all of us had eyes that bugged out. And we stank! We were bloated, and all the time it rained a dirty green rain that smelled like a four letter word. Good grief, girl! We had hair all over us where we weren’t warts. And we talked like cracked crows. We had crawlers. I itch just from thinking about it. And the dirty parts of the dream I won’t even tell you. I’ve never felt so blue in my life. I just