Free The Nail and the Oracle by Theodore Sturgeon Page B

she had glared at the bland crooked telephone and
“Oh!”
she had shrieked at it, unable to find a word for what she felt.
    A woman alone could be preyed upon, brutalized, murdered. Or worse.
Then
the police would swing into action. Then they would be around with their radios and their fingerprint kits and bloodstain tests and microscopes and things—they were very good at that. Afterwards. After she had been—
    Oh!
The word was too horrible to say, even to herself.
    Check on it. They’d check on it all right. Maybe pass Poteen’s cold careful notes around at the precinct station and laugh at her.
    It had come night then, that hot summer last year, and she had sat tensely in her wicker chair, glancing in fury at the bland cornerless hulk of the telephone, and then at the textured face of the gauze that shut out the night beyond.
    And once—she could still remember it—she had found herself wishing, actually, fervently wishing, that her door would burst open, that one of the fiends, the beasts of prey, would stand there drooling and baring his teeth, and would leap on her … leaving onlyenough afterwards to enable her to say through broken lips,
I told you it would happen, Detective Poteen. I told you
. And standing over her bleeding body, Poteen would take off his hat and say
Yes Mam!
    And it had happened, had happened! even as she sat there thinking that, the soft footsteps in the hall, the knock on her door. She had gone rigid, and suddenly the insides of her mouth and throat were dry blotting-paper, while a great cold knot writhed itself into shape in her stomach and drew tight. It wasn’t until the knock came again that she was able to answer at all.
    “Who is it?”
    “You don’t know me. The guy on the roof.”
    She did not answer. She couldn’t. In her mind’s eye, vividly, she saw through the thin wall. She saw him just as she had seen him by the kiosk in the hot afternoon, standing so shamelessly; she could only imagine him the same way by her door, and again—still—with his gaze locked with hers.
    She got up, that hot night a year ago, and, she had never before heard, had never known, the crackles, shrieks, and shouts a wicker chair gives out when a body leaves it. She had crept to the telephone, dialed. Oh! what a noise. What a grinding and clacking a telephone dial makes. Whether or not she could hear him breathing out there, she thought she did, and it was horrible.
    He knocked again, louder; it was thunder, it was guns.
Fortieth Precinct; Sergeant Deora
, yelled the phone in her ear.
    With her mouth to the telephone’s mouth, close like kissing, wet, she said, “I told you this would happen, I told that Mister Poteen, the man, he’s breaking in, he—”
This is the police, Sergeant Deora
, rasped the telephone scratchily, tinnily, too loud.
I can’t hear you. Who’s calling, please?
“Oh, sh!
Shh!!
” Little Sister whispered explosively. “Not so loud, he’ll hear you. I called this afternoon—”
May I have your name?
    Angrily, she told him. The knock came again. Out in the hall, a voice, “I got to see you a minute. Come on, I got to talk to you.” Little Sister hugged the phone, turned her back to the door. Her eyes were wide and turned so far over to the side that they hurt. “I calledthis afternoon and told that detective, that Mister Poteen—”
Your address, please
. “Oh!” she cried, but still cried whispering, “Oh! Oh! A man’s trying to break in right now, I
told
you he would!”
Yes mam. Now if you will please give me your address
.
    Like cursing, she gave her address. “This afternoon—”
We’ll check on it
. “But, but, this afternoon—” she said into the phone, the dead phone, he had gone and left her alone, now of all times.
    A knock again, only one, but hard; not a knock, a blow. “Come on, I ain’t going to hurt you. I got to talk to you a little.”
    Holding the phone still, she panted, and panted, and suddenly filled her lungs and