Legacy Of Terror

sound of his voice, the slight slur on his words, it was clear that he was very drunk indeed.
    “Lower your voice,” Lee Matherly said. His own voice was calm, sympathetic, even.
    “Why in hell should I? Why shouldn't I yell all I want? I've had an afternoon to make a man yell!”
    “Come upstairs, and you can tell me about it, Paul.”
    “I'll tell you now. Those damned townspeople-”
    “Upstairs, Paul.”
    “I want something to drink.”
    “You seem to have had plenty.”
    “I want another,” Paul said. His voice had gone whiny, but there was an underlying rage in it that Elaine had never heard before.
    “You have a bottle in your room?” Lee asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Let's go up, then. You can have a drink and tell me about it.”
    There was quiet for a moment, as if the big man was considering the suggestion. Then, suddenly, there was an explosive sound of shattered glass. “Damned mirrors,” Honneker said. “I hate damned mirrors like that. You know I do, and still you have mirrors around. What the hell? Is everyone against me around here? Does everyone hate me?”
    “Of course not,” Lee said.
    “I'm going up to get a drink,” Honneker said.
    He cursed and hollered the whole way up the steps, and his voice died slowly to a distant grumbling as they went into his room.
    Gordon pushed his unfinished dessert aside. His face had gone white, his lips tight and angry. “I'm so sorry you had to be subjected to that.”
    “It's all right, Gordon.”
    “It really isn't all right,” he said. “He's a disgusting man, most of the time. I don't like people who don't achieve things. He's lazy and drinks too much. Despite mother's will, I think father ought to see about putting Paul on his own. It might do him good.”
    She agreed, but she did not say anything, for she felt that it was a family affair which was none of her business.
    Gordon said, “My brother's another who needs a bit of discipline. Living up there, doing nothing but his oils, dreaming about critical acclaim. It would be funny if it weren't that he reminds me, so much, of mother.”
    “Oh?”
    “Yes. Flighty, excitable. Given to a lot of fantasy. Some of that's in Paul, too. It's terrible the way father does nothing to curb that attitude in both of them. It frightens me at times.”
    She knew just what he meant.
    Once she had seen to Jacob Matherly's well being and had heard him promise that he would take a sedative when he was finished with the book he was reading, she went to her own room and dressed for bed. She intended to read something light, the comedy-adventure novel which was among those she had purchased before she came here. But the novel was a bit too silly for her tastes and, besides, Paul Honneker's periodic noisy ramblings would not allow her to settle in for more than a few pages without being disturbed. When it was clear she was not going to become absorbed in the story, she put the book down and busied herself with a number of small chores.
    She washed out two pair of stockings in the bath attached to her room and hung them to dry.
    Paul Honneker was still rambling.
    She filed her nails and painted them with clear polish to keep them from chipping more than they usually did. She really did not care much about the appearance of her nails, but this was, at least, something to help pass the time.
    She dusted her room and straightened things a bit-mostly things that did not need straightening.
    She wrote a short letter to a girlfriend who had attended nurses training with her. They were not really that close, and Elaine had intended to let the friendship gradually wither once they had gone their separate ways. But now it was nice to be able to make even this limited contact with the outside world.
    She watched a television documentary about the ecology movement. Ordinarily, she did not care for situation comedies or westerns, preferring those shows which she felt were educational. Tonight, however, she watched several intolerably ridiculous programs when the ecology hour was over. She watched, in fact, until she grew sleepy. At a few minutes past midnight, she turned off the set, rolled over, pulled the covers up around her and reached out for the shimmering aura of sleep which was close at hand.
    She dreamed of a painting.
    The painting was her face, so huge it filled all horizons. Her face, in that painting, was covered with droplets of blood. Her own blood. Her eyes stared sightlessly out of the universal canvas, her mouth parted in a wordless scream of