Free Totentanz by Al Sarrantonio Page A

himself again, feeling warmth run down his
leg to his sock, and he found that he was bent over. "I'm sorry. .
.”
    "Don't worry about it," the voice said.
Barney saw something, a thin shape, pass in front of the light, and
then the light was gone and he was crouched on a set of steps
leading downward. He slipped and regained his footing. He looked
back to see a weaker, dark-gray light shut off as a doorway closed
from the outside world. He was on a flat surface, cold in his wet
socks. He could not stop trembling.
    "Papers . . .” he said, and then he doubled
over again, crying out as his bowels emptied into his underpants.
"Oh, God. . .”
    "Do you want to go to the bathroom?" the
voice asked.
    "Yes.”
    "Does it really matter?"
    “. . . yes . . .”
    "Really?"
    He was on the cold floor, curled up.
    "Stand.” the voice said.
    "Yes, Sister.”
    "I said stand up. Now .”
    "I can't, Sister. Please let me go to the
bathroom.” His sphincter convulsed, and he felt a racking pain in
his bowels.
    He looked up pleadingly to see his sergeant
from Korea standing over him. The man leered. He had always leered.
He had been a stupid and vain man, and there had been more than a
hint that the mine he had stepped on had not been planted by the
North Koreans—or at least had been passed over by the American
detachment.
    "Get up," the sergeant ordered.
    "You can't be here," Barney said
wonderingly.
    "Of course I can," the sergeant said, and
then Barney saw that the sergeant had turned into something
else.
    "Oh, God," Barney Bates sobbed.
    The figure was not Sister, or Sergeant
Crimins, or the beast with eyes as big as saucers. The figure blew
smoke in his face. It was black smoke, and it burned his skin like
acid. The face was very white. The eye colors were reversed, the
pupils' white speckled with gray, the irises black. He could see no
teeth in the mouth.
    "Speak," the voice said, smooth and low and
not kind.
    ". . . Oh, God. . . ."
    "You want to see my papers?" the voice
mocked, as acidic as the smoke from its cigarette. "Afraid I'll
make too much noise?"
    "Oh, God, no."
    The figure laughed, angling its head all the
way back theatrically and barking out low, half-strangled gasps, as
if its throat was not deep enough to bring up true vocalization. It
began to cough and then threw its cigarette down at Barney's feet.
Barney moved to pick it up, but the figure made a sharp move of
dismissal and he stood where he was, straight up now, and shaking
and cold and wet.
    "Time to see my papers, Barney Bates," the
figure said, and then it was Sister, and she did not have the
knowing look on her face as when she had turned around from the
blackboard, but rather the look that said, "No, you can't leave,"
and Barney saw her bring the ruler out from under her cassock, the
one she always seemed to have hidden in her right hand. She raised
it above him, and then he remembered his gun. He had a gun and he
would use it on her. Miraculously he found it still with him,
tucked into his underpants, inside the tight elastic. It was cold
against his belly. He pawed it out, pleading, "Sister, just let me
go to the bathroom," but as he held it up, her hand, the one with
the sharp ruler, came down and knocked it from him. There was great
pain in the hand that had held the gun, and as he looked up, he saw
that Sister was gone, and in her place was that dark figure again,
the horrid, toothless thing with the cigarette and the inside-out
eyes.
    Barney tried to say something, but when he
opened his mouth, he found that he was already screaming, and as he
looked at the hand that had been hit by the ruler, he saw why he
was screaming: The flesh had been stripped from his fingers, and
that all that remained was the white, dry bone of skeleton. His
bony hand was curled up on itself like a claw. And then he saw that
Sister, once again, was back and that she had raised the ruler high
over him, mouthing the word "No!" and when she brought the ruler
down upon him, the