The Body Snatchers Page 4

  I parked just outside the open garage and. none of us speaking a word, we walked single-file into the garage, Jack leading. Then we were in the basement, the half-open door of the billiard room six or eight paces ahead. The light was on, just as Theodora had left it, and now Jack was pushing the door open, and starting to walk through.

  He stopped so suddenly that Mannie humped into him; then Jack moved slowly forward again, and Mannie and I filed in after him. There was no body on the table. Under the bright shadowless light lay the brilliant green felt, and along the center of the table lay a sort of thick gray fluff, which might have been jarred loose, I supposed, from the open rafters. —JACK FINNEY

  (This is the first of three parts)

  The Story: Something weird and awful was taking place in Santa Mira, the little town near San Francisco where I, MILES BENNELL, practice medicine. I first learned of it when BECKY DRISCOLL, a girl I hadn’t seen since high school ten years ago, came to me, terribly upset. Her cousin, WILMA LENTZ, was suffering from a delusion: Wilma was positive IRA and ALEDA LENTZ, an uncle and aunt with whom she lived, were not really her uncle and aunt. They looked the same, acted the same, even remembered past events correctly, but Wilma knew they were not who they claimed to be. I was not able to help Wilma, and so I made an appointment for her to see MANNIE KAUFMAN, a psychiatrist friend of mine. But in the next few days, several more patients came to me, all positive that close relatives weren’t really who they seemed. It was a frightening mass hysteria. And then I had an urgent call from JACK BELICEC, a writer friend. When Becky and I got to his house, Jack and his wife, THEODORA, were distraught—they had found the body of a man in their basement, a body that had evidently never lived; it was unmarked, unused, a blank. I noticed that the body was exactly the same size as Jack, and, to test a theory, we agreed that Jack would go back to bed, Theodora would watch the body for any changes, and Becky and I would return to town. When I dropped Becky off, she confessed she felt her father wasn’t really himself. Later, Jack and Theodora arrived at my house—Theodora was hysterical. Jack and I were sure there was some connection between that body and the mass delusion in town. I telephoned to Mannie to come over immediately. And then I had a premonition—I ran over to Becky’s house, and in the basement I found a “blank” duplicate of her. After bringing Becky to my house, Mannie, Jack and I went out to Jack’s. But when we looked in his basement, the body was gone; where it had been, there was only a pile of grayish fluff.

  THE SECOND OF THREE PARTS

  MANNIE and Jack and I went out of the house then and sat down in the grass beside my car, each with a cigarette in hand, and stared down at the town in the valley. The roof tops were still gray and colorless, but windows flashed a dull blind orange in the almost level rays of the rising sun.

  Jack, speaking to himself as he stared down at the toy houses below, said: “How many of those things are down there in town right now? Hidden away in secret places?”

  Mannie smiled. “None,” he said, “none at all.” He grinned as we turned to stare at him. “Listen,” he said quietly, “you’ve got a mystery on your hands all right—a real one. Whose body was that? And where is it now? But it’s a completely normal mystery. A murder, possibly; I couldn’t say. Whatever it is though, it’s well within the bounds of human experience. Don’t try to make any more of it.” I started to protest, but Mannie shook his head. “Now, listen to me,” he went on. “The human mind is strange and wonderful, but I’m not sure it will ever figure itself out. Everything else, maybe—from the atom to the universe—but not itself.”

  His arm swung outward, gesturing at the town below us. “Down there in Santa Mira a week or ten days ago, someone formed a delusion: a member of his family was not what he seemed, but an impostor. It’s not a common delusion precisely, but it happens occasionally, and every psychiatrist encounters it sooner or later—and usually has some idea of how to treat it.”

  Mannie leaned back against the wheel of my car and smiled at us. “But last week I was stumped. It’s not a common delusion, yet from this one town alone there were a dozen or more such cases, all occurring within the last week or so. In all my practice, I’d never before encountered such a case, and it had me stopped cold.” Mannie drew on his cigarette again, then stubbed it out in the dirt beside him. “But I’ve been doing some reading lately, refreshing my mind on certain facts I should have remembered before. I’ve been reading about mass hysteria, autosuggestion, whatever you want to call it. Miles, you must remember reading, in med school, about the dancing malady that spread over Europe in the thirteen hundreds.” He looked at Jack. “An astounding epidemic,” he said, “impossible to believe, except that it happened. Whole towns began to dance—first one person, then another, then every man, woman and child in it, till they fell dead or exhausted. It swept all Europe—the dancing malady—you can read about it in your encyclopedia. It lasted an entire summer—as I recall—and then—it stopped, died out. It left people, I suppose, wondering what in the world had happened to them.”

  MANNIE paused, watching us, then shrugged. “So there you are. These examples of mass hysteria are hard to believe till you see them—and even when you do see them.

  “And that’s what’s happened in Santa Mira”—he nodded at the town in the valley. “The news spreads, semi-secretly at first. It’s whispered around—someone believes her husband, sister, aunt or uncle, is actually an undetectable impostor—a strange and exciting bit of news to hear. And then it keeps on happening. And it spreads, and there’s a new case, or several, nearly every day. Hell, the Salem witch hunt, flying saucers—they’re all part of this same amazing aspect of the human mind. People live lonely lives, a lot of them; these delusions bring attention and concern.”

  But Jack was slowly shaking his head no, and Mannie said quietly, “The body was real—that’s what’s bothering you, isn’t it, Jack?” Jack nodded, and Mannie said, “Yes, it was. You all saw it. But that’s all that’s real. Jack, if you’d found that body a month ago, you’d have recognized it for what it was—a puzzling, possibly very strange mystery, but a perfectly natural one. So would Theodora, Becky and Miles.

  “Anyhow,” Mannie went on, “you found a body of approximately your height and build, which isn’t too strange; you’re an average-sized man. The face, in death—and this happens too—was smooth and unlined, bland in expression.” Mannie shrugged. “Well, you’re a writer, an imaginative man, and you’re under the influence of the delusion that’s loose in Santa Mira, and so are Miles, Theodora and Becky. And your mind leaped for a connection, leaped to a conclusion explaining two mysteries in terms of each other. The human mind searches for cause and effect always. And we all prefer the weird and thrilling answer to the dull and commonplace.”

  “Listen, Mannie. Theodora saw—”

  “Exactly what she expected to see! What she was frightened to death of seeing! What she was absolutely certain to see, under the circumstances. I’d really be astonished if she hadn’t! Why, you two had her—and she had herself—completely conditioned and ready for it.”

  I started to speak, and Mannie said, “You saw nothing on the shelf in Becky’s basement. Miles, except a rolled-up rug. maybe. Or a pile of sheets or laundry—most anything at all, or nothing at all, would do. You had yourself so worked up by then, Miles, so hyperexcited from running through the streets, that—as you say yourself—you were certain you were going to find what you did find. It was a lead-pipe cinch that you would.” He held up a hand as I started to speak. “Oh, you saw it as vividly and absolutely real as anyone has ever seen anything. But you saw it only in your mind.” Mannie frowned at me. “Hell, you’re a doctor, Miles. You know something about how this sort of phenomenon works.”

  He was right; I did. In college I once sat in a classroom listening to a psychology professor quietly lecturing, and now, sitting there on the edge of the road, I was remembering how the door of that classroom had suddenly burst open, as two struggling men stumbled into the
room. One man broke loose, yanked a banana from his pocket, pointed it at the other, and yelled, “Bang!” The other clutched his side, pulled a small American flag from his pocket, waved it violently in the other man’s face, and then they both rushed out of the room.

  The professor said, “This is a controlled experiment. You will each take paper and pencil, write down a complete account of what you just saw, and place it on my desk as you leave.”

  Next day, in class, he read our papers aloud. There were some twenty-odd students, and no two accounts were alike, or even close. Some people saw three men, some four, and one girl saw five. Not a single paper mentioned the American flag or the banana; those objects didn’t fit into the sudden, violent little scene that had burst on our senses, so our minds excluded them, simply ruled them out and substituted other more appropriate objects, such as guns, knives and blood-soaked rags, which each of us was absolutely certain we’d seen. We had seen them, in fact, but only in our minds, hunting for some explanation.

  So I knew Mannie was right, and it was strange—I felt a sense of disappointment, a real letdown; I was still trying to resist believing him. We do prefer the weird and thrilling, as Mannie had said, to the dull and commonplace. Even though I knew, intellectually, that Mannie was right, emotionally it was still very nearly impossible to accept, and I guess it showed in my face, and in Jack’s.

  Because Mannie got to his feet and stood there for several seconds, looking down at us. Then he said, “You want proof? I’ll give it to you, Miles, go back to Becky’s house. In a calm state of mind, you’ll see no body on that shelf in her basement; I guarantee that. There was only one body, the one in Jack’s basement, the one that started all this. You want more proof? I’ll give it to you. This delusion will die down in Santa Mira, just as it did in Europe, just as all of them always do. And the people who came to you, Miles —Wilma Lentz and the others—will come back; most of them will, anyway. Others will avoid you out of simple embarrassment. But if you hunt them up, they’ll admit what the others tell you: the delusion is gone; they simply don’t understand how or why it ever entered their heads. And that’ll be the end of it. I guarantee that.” Mannie grinned then, glanced up at the sky, blue and clear now, and said, “I could use some breakfast.”

  “Me, too,” I said, getting up. “Come on back to my place.”

  Jack went into his house then, to turn off the lights and lock the doors. When he came out, he was carrying a brown cardboard folder bulging with papers. “My office,” he said. “Work in progress, notes, references, junk. Very valuable stuff”—he laughed—“and I like to keep it with me.”

  AT BECKY’S house I stopped at the curb and got out, leaving the motor running. It was still very early and I didn’t see either people or movement in the entire block. I walked boldly around to the side of the house. At the broken basement window I stood glancing up at the neighbors’ windows. I didn’t see anyone or hear a sound. I stooped quickly, and crawled in through the window. The basement was light now, and very silent, and I was calm but worried. I didn’t want to be caught down here and have to explain what I was doing, because I knew I couldn’t explain. I knew that Mannie was right.

  The door of the cupboard where I’d found the body stood open, as I’d left it, and now I knelt down to look at the bottom shelf. The light from a nearby basement window struck it full, and the shelf was empty. All I found was a thick mass of gray fluff; it was the kind of dust and dirt, I supposed, that accumulates in basements, and which my senses had distorted, in a kind of hysterical explosion, into a body.

  Back in the car, I nodded at Mannie, grinning a little sheepishly. “You were right.” I said, and I glanced at Jack and shrugged.

  WHEN we got back to my house, Theodora and Becky were up, sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. Theodora stood up as we came in, Jack hurrying toward her. Then they held each other tight for a long moment and Jack kissed her hard. He drew back to look at her then, and Mannie and I looked too. She was still tired, there were circles under her eyes, but the eyes were calm and sane now, and she smiled.

  Then, almost as though a signal had been given, we all began laughing a lot, making jokes. Theodora said, “I’ve been thinking it over. I could use a duplicate of Jack. One of them could moon around the house as usual, not hearing a word I say, working at whatever he’s writing in his mind. And maybe the other would have time to help with the dishes once in a while.” Then we rang the changes on that idea. Actually, I think, we were almost high, in reaction against what had happened. Presently Mannie said that by the time he got home, shaved, changed clothes, and got to his office, he’d just have time to keep his first appointment. He said his good-bys and the rest of us settled down to breakfast.

  Afterward, I lighted a cigarette, sat back in my chair, and told Theodora and Becky, briefly and factually, what had happened. I told them what we’d found—or rather, hadn’t found—in Jack’s and Becky’s basements, and what Mannie had told us while we sat in front of Jack’s house.

  I expected what happened when I finished: Theodora simply shook her head, her lips compressed in quiet stubbornness. It just wasn’t possible—not yet—for her to believe that she hadn’t seen what she was certain she had seen—and could still see in her mind’s eye. And I knew it would be harder for her than for the rest of us to accept the truth. Becky accepted it, though. She didn’t comment, but I could see from the relief in her eyes that she knew Mannie was right, and I knew she was thinking of her father.

  Jack’s opinions carry a lot of weight with Theodora, and so now I turned to him, waiting for him to set Theodora straight. Suddenly he stood and walked out of the kitchen; then he came back, carrying his work folder.

  “I’m kind of a squirrel,” he said, opening the folder. “A collector of odds and ends without quite knowing why. And one of my collections is made up of certain newspaper items. I wanted you to see them after our talk with Mannie.” Picking a clipping at random, he glanced at the heading, then passed it over to me.

  I held it so Becky could read too. Frogs Fell on Alabama, the heading said; it was a little one-column story, a couple inches long, date-lined, Edgeville, Ala. Any fishermen in this town of four thousand, it began, had plenty of bait this morning—if there were only a place in this area to use it. Last night a shower of tiny frogs, of undetermined origin . . . The little story—I skimmed through the rest of it—went on to say that a shower of small frogs had fallen on the town for several minutes the previous night. The tone of the story was mildly humorous, and gave no explanation of the shower.

  I looked up at Jack, and he smiled. “Silly, isn’t it?” he said. “Especially since, as the story itself suggests, there was no place the frogs could have come from.”

  I laid down the clipping. “What’s your point, Jack?”

  “Well”—Jack got slowly to his feet—“I guess it’s this: Is Mannie right?” He shrugged and began slowly pacing the kitchen floor. “I guess so; I think so. Only”—he nodded at the clippings—“there are a couple hundred queer little happenings which I’ve collected in just a few years, and you could find thousands more. And sometimes I wonder if they don’t mean something, prove something, if you only knew what.” Again he shrugged. “Maybe not. But at least I think they prove this: strange events really do happen every now and then, here and there throughout the world. Events that simply don’t fit in with the great body of knowledge that the human race has gradually acquired over thousands of years.

  “Miles, should they always be explained away? Or laughed away? Or simply ignored? Because that’s what always happens.” Jack sat down at the table again. “Take any of these”—he picked up a clipping. “This one from the New York Post, for example. The New York Post is a real newspaper, and this particular story was actually printed in the Post just a few years ago, and no doubt in a lot of other papers all over the country. Thousands read it, including me. But did we rise up insisting that our body of knowledge be revised to include this strang
e little occurrence? Did I? No, and now, like all the other odd little happenings that don’t quite fit in with what we think we know, it’s forgotten and ignored by the world, except for a few curiosa collectors like me.”

  “And maybe it should be,” I said quietly. “Take a look at this.”

  AS JACK talked, I’d been idly glancing through his clippings. Now I pushed one toward him. It was a squib from the local paper, and it didn’t say much. One L. Bernard Budlong, botany and biology professor at the local college, was quoted as denying a comment the paper had attributed to him the day before, a statement about some mysterious objects found on a farm west of town. They were described as large seed pods of some sort or other, and now Budlong was denying having said that they’d come from outer space. The Tribune apologized. Sorry, Prof! the story ended. It was dated May 9th.

  “There you are, Jack,” I said gently, “the collapse of one of your little items, a one-inch retraction buried in the paper a day or so later. Makes you wonder”—I nodded at his mound of clippings—“about all the rest, doesn’t it?”

  “Sure,” Jack said. “That retraction belongs in the collection too. And that’s why it’s there; I didn’t exclude it. But you can’t explain them all away, perpetually and forever!”

  For a moment he sat glaring at me, then he smiled. “So is Mannie right? Should what happened last night be explained away too?” Jack shrugged. “Probably. Mannie’s probably right. He makes good sense, plenty of it—he always does. And he’s explained what happened almost satisfactorily, almost completely. I very nearly accept it, in fact maybe ninety-nine per cent.” For a moment Jack stared at us, then lowered his voice and said very softly, “But there’s a tiny one per cent of doubt still left in my mind.”

  Theodora was pushing herself up from her chair; her voice came out high and shrill; “I can’t go back there, Jack! I can’t set foot in that house! I know what I saw!” As Jack took her into his arms, the tears were streaming down her cheeks, and the fear stood naked in her eyes once more.