The Best of Robert Bloch (29 page)

He gazed at the samples once again.
Time Capsules.
Catchy name for a pharmaceutical product. But why didn't the Ace Manufacturing Company print its literature in English? He scanned the last line of the literature.
"Dnt gt yr vwls n n prr."

Made no sense. No sense at all.

But then, neither did most of his patients. So perhaps the pills would do some good. He'd have to wait for a likely subject.

The likely subject arrived at 3 p.m. Her name was Cookie Jarr, which was probably a polite euphemism for "sexpot." But what's in a name?

Sexpot or Jarr, Cookie was obviously quite a dish. She sprawled, in obvious
déshabillé
, on the couch, and like the professional stripper she was, proceeded to bare her
psyche
.

After a dozen or so previous sessions, Dr. Placebo had succeeded in teaching her the technique of free association, and now she obediently launched into a form of
monologorrhea
.

"I had a dream under very peculiar circumstances the other night . . . I was sleeping alone . . . and in it I was a geek . . ."

"One moment, please," murmured Dr. Placebo, softly. "You say you were a geek? One of those carnival performers who bites the heads off of chickens?"

Cookie shook her auburn locks impatiently. "Not chickens," she explained. "I was very rich in this dream, and I was geeking a peacock." She frowned. "In fact, I was so rich I was Marie Antoinette. And they dragged me out for execution, and I looked at the executioner and said, 'Dr. Guillotine, I presume?' and he said, 'Please, no names—you must be the soul of indiscretion.' So then I woke up and it was four in the morning and I looked out of the window at this big neon sign that says
OK USED CARS.
You know something, Doc? I'd never buy an
OK USED CAR.
And I'd never eat at a place that says
EAT.
Or one that says
FINE FOOD.
And I'd never be buried in a funeral parlor approved by Duncan Hines. Do you think I'm superstitious? They say it's bad luck to walk under a black cat."

"Perhaps," said Dr. Placebo, sagely. "And then again, perhaps not. We must learn to relate, to adjust. Life is just a bowl of theories." He gazed at her piercingly. "The dream sequence is merely symbolism. Out with it now—face the truth. Why did you really wake up at four in the morning?"

"Because I had to go to the bathroom," Cookie snapped. "No, really, Doc, I'll level with you. It's the love bit. That damn Max keeps getting me down, because he's so jealous of Harry, only that's ridiculous because I don't like Harry at all, it's really Fred, on account of he reminds me of Jerry, the guy I'm crazy about. Or almost as crazy about as Ray." She paused, biting her lip. "Oh, I hate men!" she said.

"Ummm-hmmmm," said Dr. Placebo, doodling on a scratchpad with which he was ostensibly taking notes but actually drawing phallic symbols which looked suspiciously like dollar-signs.

"Is that all you got to say?" demanded Cookie, sitting up. "Fifty bucks an hour I'm paying, and for what? My nerves are killing me. You got any happy pills, Doc?"

"Happy pills?"

"Tranquilizers, or like whatever. Remember that stuff you gave me last month?"

"Oh, the cantharides."

"Yeah." Cookie smiled happily. "That was the greatest!"

Dr. Placebo frowned; his memories did not coincide with Cookie's, particularly when he recalled the frantic aftermath of that episode when he had to drag her bodily from the ninth floor of the local YMCA. But the experimental urge was strong. Few men could look at Cookie without feeling the urge to experiment.

"Well, there's something new," he said, cautiously.

"Give."

"It's called a Time Capsule. Alters the subjective time-sense and—er—all that jazz." He found himself lapsing into the idiom with Cookie; she was the sort who inspired lapses.

"Meaning what?"

"I'm not quite sure. I imagine it slows down the reflexes."

"Relaxes you, huh? That's for baby."

"You'll have to take it here, under test conditions."

"The mad scientist bit? You are gonna hypnotize me and get fresh, is that it?"

"Nothing of the sort. I merely mean I must observe any side-effects."

"Stuff really turns you on, eh?" Cookie bounced up happily. "Well, I'm for kicks. Spill the pill for me, Bill."

Dr. Placebo went to the water-cooler and filled a paper cup. Then he carefully extracted one of the yellow capsules from its cellophane container. He handed it and the water to Cookie.

She gulped and swallowed.

Then she lay back on the couch. "Wow, I'm in Dizzyville," she whispered. "Everything's like round and round—no squares—"

Her voice trailed off, and for a very good reason.

Now it was Dr. Placebo's turn to gulp and swallow, as he stared down at the empty couch.

Cookie had disappeared.

"Where is she?" Ray Connors demanded. "Come on, where is she?"

Dr. Placebo sighed. He felt a horrible depression, quite unlike the shapely depression which had been left in the couch by Cookie's body.

"She—she cancelled her appointment this afternoon," he said, weakly.

"But I drove her over," the mustached young man insisted. "Went downstairs to do a bit of business—I'm booking a flea circus out in Los Angeles and I had to see about renting a dog so the troupe could travel in comfort—and then I came right back up to your office to wait. The receptionist told me Cookie was inside. So what happened?"

"I—I wish I knew," Dr. Placebo told him, truthfully. "She was lying right there on the couch when she vanished."

"Vanished?"

Dr. Placebo nodded. "Into thin air."

"Thin air, fat air, I don't believe it." Connors advanced on the pudgy little psychiatrist. "Come on, where you hiding the body?"

"She vanished, I tell you," Dr. Placebo wailed. "All I did was give her one of these sample pills—"

He indicated the packet on his desk-top and Connors picked it up. "This says
Time Capsules
, not
Vanishing Cream
," he snorted. "Look, Doc, I'm not one of your loony patients. I'm an agent, and you can't con me. So you got sore at Cookie and pushed her out of the window—
this
I can understand. Why don't you admit it and let me call the cops? We could get a big spread on this." He began to pace the floor rapidly. "Real headline stuff—
JEALOUS HEAD SHRINKER SLAYS BEAUTIFUL PATIENT.
Why, we'll push the Finch trial right off the front page! Think of the angles; exclusive interview rights, sob-stories to all the women's magazines, a nice big ghostwritten best-seller, a fat movie deal. Doc, you've got a fortune in your lap and you don't know enough to cross your legs! Now for ten per cent, I'll handle everything, you won't have to worry—"

Dr. Placebo sighed softly. "I told you," he murmured. "She swallowed one of these pills and disappeared."

"Fiddlesticks," said Connors. "Or words to that effect." And before Dr. Placebo could stop him, he walked over to the couch, sat down, ripped a pill from the cellophane confines of the package, and popped it into his mouth.

"No—don't!" cried the Doctor.

Connors shrugged. "You see? I swallowed one and nothing happens. I'm still here." He leaned back. "So how about it, Doc, you gonna level with me? Maybe you didn't push her out of the window. Maybe you carved her up and stuck the pieces in your filing-cabinet. Hey, that's an even better angle—
MAD BUTCHER CARVES CHICK!
O
R RIPPER GETS FLIPPER WITH STRIPPER.
For ten per cent of the gross, I'll fix it so you—"

Young Mr. Connors fell back on the couch and closed his eyes.

"Hey, what was in that last drink?" he mumbled. "I can't see."

Dr. Placebo advanced upon him nervously. "That pill," he gasped. "Let me phone Dr. Glutea down the hall—he's a G.U. man, maybe he has a stomach-pump—"

Connors waved him away. "Never mind," he whispered, faintly. "I
can
see, now."

This was strange, to say the least, for he still had his eyes closed. Dr. Placebo bent over him, not daring to touch his rigid body.

"Yeah, I can see. Stars. Nothing but stars. You running one of those science fiction movies, Doc? Sure, I'm hip now. There's the world. Or is it? I can see North America and South America, but where are all those funny lines?"

"What funny lines?"

"Like in all the geography books—isn't there supposed to be latitude and longitude?"

"That's just on maps."

"I dig. This isn't a map, Doc. It's for real . . . but it can't be . . . no . . . no . . ."

"Please, Mr. Connors, pull yourself together!"

"I'm pulling myself apart . . . Oh, Doc, if you saw what I see . . . like crazy, the world inside a big egg-timer up in the sky . . . sort of an hourglass, you know the bit?"

"Go on," murmured Dr. Placebo.

"There's sand or something running out of the end, into the other half of the timer . . . and now . . . a big claw, bigger than the whole world . . . reaching out and squeezing . . . squeezing the guts out of the earth . . .
squeeeee
. . .

"Go on," repeated Dr. Placebo. But it wasn't necessary, for Connors had already gone on.

The couch was empty.

The little psychiatrist blinked and shook his head. He walked over to the desk and, indulging in a symbolic funeral, buried his face in his hands. "Now what?" he groaned. "Physician, heal thyself."

Then he sat up and took stock of the situation. After all he
was
a physician; moreover, a skilled analyst. The thing to do was to consider the problem logically. There were several obvious courses of action.

First of all, he could call the police. He'd simply explain what had happened, they would simply not believe him, and he'd simply go to the gas-chamber.

Secondly, he could tell his receptionist. She was a sweet young thing, and madly in love with him as a Father-Image. Her reaction was predictable; she'd pop him into her car and they'd drive off to Mexico together, where they'd live happily ever after until she ran off with a bullfighter. No, the gas-chamber was better. But why wait, when there were even faster methods?

Maybe he could adopt some of Connors' ideas to his own use. Perhaps he could jump out of the window, or cut himself up into little pieces and hide in the file-cabinet. Merely a logical extension of filing one's fingernails.

No, he was irrational. He needed time to think. Time to think—

Dr. Placebo stared at the cellophane envelope which still rested on his desk where Connors had tossed it after taking the capsule.
Time Capsule.

"Alters time-sense both subjectively and objectively." Suppose it were true? Once again he picked up the cryptic literature and studied it closely. And all of a sudden he found himself translating fluently. Only the vowels were missing.

It was plain English, all right, and even the last line of the literature made sense now. He read it slowly.

"Don't get your vowels in an uproar."

Excellent advice. Advice from an area where the time-sense was altered, where linguistics were attuned to another tempo, where others marched to a different drummer.

Cookie had vanished suddenly, Connors slowly. Why the difference? Perhaps because Cookie had taken the capsule with water and Connors swallowed his dry. Took a while for the gelatin coating to dissolve.

Funny, Connors seeing those hallucinations. All very symbolic—the earth in an egg-timer and somebody squeezing it; the sands of time running forth. Running where? Running out, that's where. In another minute
his
time would run out; the receptionist would run in and ask where his patients were.

He had lost his patients. He had lost his patience. It all came back to the same thing—call the police, run off to Mexico, jump out of the window, or kill himself and stuff his dead body in the file. Sort of a necro-file. Maybe he deserved to die, if he was capable of making puns like that. It would rise up from the grass over his grave to haunt him, for the pun is mightier than the sward—

No time for that now.

No time.

But a Time Capsule—

He picked up the cellophane container gingerly.

Why not?

It was a way out. Way out, indeed—but a way.

For one idiotic instant, Dr. Placebo took a good hard look at himself. A fat, foolish little man, driven by greed, who had never known love in all his life except as a professional Father-Image. A man surrounded by sensualists like Cookie and opportunists like Connors. What was he doing here in the first place?

"I am a stranger and a Freud, in a world I never made."

It was a terrible realization, a bitter pill to swallow. But swallow it he must. There was no other choice. Fingers trembling, he extracted the last Time Capsule from the packet and raised it to his lips. He swallowed.

There was no sensation. He floated over to the water-cooler and poured a drink. It gurgled down his throat. And then came the kaleidoscope, engulfing him.

Five minutes later his receptionist walked into the empty office. She inspected it, panicked, but eventually recovered and did what any sensible girl would do under the circumstances—called the Bureau of Missing Persons.

There was no answer . . .

There was, of course, no kaleidoscope. Nor did Dr. Placebo find himself entrapped in a cosmic egg-timer whirling in outer space. No huge hand stretched forth to menace his reason and he knew that he had not died.

But there was a dizzying sensation and he waited until it ceased before he allowed the autonomy of his nervous system to resume sway and blinked his eyes open once more.

Dr. Placebo was prepared for almost anything. If, indeed, the Time Capsule had been efficacious, he knew that he could have gone an infinite distance forward or backward in temporal dimensions. Long conditioning through attendance at monster-movies led him to expect either the titanic vistas of
papier-mâché
cities of the far future or
papier-mâché
dinosaurs of the distant past. In either era, he knew, nothing would bear the slightest resemblance to the world he had lived in, except that the women of the future or the prehistoric age would still wear lipstick and mascara.