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his chest, all went pumping back into action. Then his head. But his eyes
remained dead. It was still dark all around him. But the fear had become a new
creature, with new attributes; it had metamorphosed, and the paralysis was
gone. He could move well enough--which he proved by standing up, supporting
himself on the rifle and the banister which brushed him, which he grabbed--but
he was trembling uncontrollably. He was locked in the hideous embrace of a
twitching that threatened to shake his body apart. His head ached terribly.
His mouth was dry, and it hurt.
The sound of rifle-fire from outside brought him to sudden awareness that
nothing had changed.
Truck and the others were still pinned down in that goddam warehouse, and the
Krauts were intent on filling the building with corpses.
He knew there was nothing he could do, personally, to take the heat off them.
Too many Germans.
His only thought was of getting back to the lines, letting the main force know
Bain-de-Bretagne was a deathtrap, and trying to send back a larger force to
pry the patrol out of their bind. He thought of all this haphazardly, with
stops and starts in his processes for the fear that gnawed at him. And all of
it was afterthought. His first thought was: It'll be lighter outside.
Of such stuff are heroes made.
But when he had found his way back to the front door, and stuck his head out,
a sense of impending doom had warned him and he had ducked back in just as a
burst of automatic fire whined across the doorway. His friend in the
bell-tower had taken no coffee breaks. He slammed the door. And was alone in
the hole of black. The fear slammed him once more. Visions dark and terrible
came and went. He was in the dark. The blind bird, the blind blind bird!
In a gesture he had long since stopped using, his fist went to his mouth. The
child habit, back again. The man a child once more. Help me ...
He began searching the house for other exits. There were no other doors. It
was a town house, backed on three sides by the rear walls of other homes. The
windows were bricked up. There was no skylight. The street was a cemetery
waiting to receive his bones.
He lit a match. It was all the good and warm and fine and golden in the
universe. His tongue came out of his mouth in pleasure at the sight of it,
flickering there in his hand. He had not thought of it before, why, he didn't
know. But here it was and here he was, and the light was all around him,
washing him, laving him, reassuring him, and ... he burned his fingers. He
dropped the match and it went out.
There were three more in the folder. He wanted to light them all, all at once,
and start a bonfire that would drive away the fears and the sharp-fanged
things that lived in his fears of the dark.
But that was insane. He struck another, brightly, quickly.
(And he suddenly realized he was just a bit mad.) The match burned out ...
At which point he saw the metal ring in the floor, attached to the trapdoor.
Trapdoor, basement, drainpipe, sewer, river, outlet, freedom, the American
lines, freedom, light light light! A
Chinese box within a box within a box within a great fog of darkness. He lit
another match, and slinging the rifle across his back, he pulled the trapdoor
ring. The huge wooden slab came up heavily, and he let it fall back with a
crash. The pit opened before him. Darker than the darkness above. Most black
of all hells. Infernally devoid of the slightest hint of light. That basement.
There could be ... anything ... down there.
He stumbled back, the fear a great clot in his brain.
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Black!
Black!
Oh, God how black! He could never go down there, could never never go down
there! Madness waited, the fears of his childhood, damn you damn you, damn you
the one I called "she," damn you!
Trembling!
Stumbling!
Incapable of halting himself, he stepped forward, his foot encountered
emptiness and with a shriek he fell into the hole. He hit the stairs five
times on his way to the bottom, and brought up short lying tangled, crying
like an infant, at the bottom of the flight. He was down there in the pit.
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