Pattern For Panic (1954) by Richard S. Prather

Author:Richard S. Prather [Prather, Richard S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2014-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

I woke up suddenly, cold perspiration on my body, the sheet clammy beneath me. Sunlight streamed through the open window. Half awake, half asleep, I still could see shadowy figures moving in the nightmare, fantastic and unreal, unearthly, as nightmare figures are.

I had been looking into a sterile, gleaming laboratory filled with curved retorts and huge glass beakers and flickering Bunsen burners, and great vats filled with a slimy, molasses-like brew, a bubbling lava with tenuous, misty threads wriggling from its oily surface and floating through the air like writhing worms. Shaggy, misshapen apes reeled about the white and gleaming room, moving jerkily. The disembodied head of General Lopez hung in the steaming air, a jagged hole gaping from one bloody side, the gray brain hanging, Daliesque, from it to the floor.

Dr. Buffington stood, twice as tall as life, in the center of his laboratory, bending down to peer at first one and then another of the apes, examine the pendant brain, stare at the bubbling vats. A tiny, doll-sized girl danced mechanically, clapping her hands and rolling her dark eyes, head rocking back and forth as if in time to a metronome. Buff lay silently in the corner of the room, her face bloodless, her staring eyes the solid white of boiled eggs.

The apes moved jerkily, crashed into the tables, overturning them as glass shattered noiselessly in the total silence of my dream. The apes fell, one by one, and rolled and shuddered, then lay still, their bodies melting into black putrescence. The boiling vats melted to the floor, the slimy lava pouring endlessly. The gray brain twitched and writhed, pulsed slowly like a feeding snake.

I sat up in bed, rubbed a hand across my cold forehead, and shuddered. Monique stirred restlessly beside me. I got up, washed and dressed, checked my .38 again. I'd cleaned it the best I could before going to sleep, and it was O.K. I awakened Monique.

She blinked at me drowsily, stretched. “Oh-h, did I sleep!” She blinked some more and frowned slightly. “Hi. You look sort of sick."

“I had a dream, a nightmare. Haven't snapped out of it yet, I guess. Look, I'm going to take off. You want anything to eat, or are you going to sleep some more?"

She yawned. “Sleep, I guess. Where are you going?"

“I don't know yet—but don't you go anywhere. I'll call you later.” I remembered there wasn't any phone. “I mean, I'll drop back when I can. I'll see you later, honey.” She nodded and I went out.

While I grabbed some fried Vienna sausage with toast and coffee, I thought about what I'd do today. Last night's events had followed one another too quickly for me to fit them together into any real pattern. I was slowly coming wide awake and I felt good enough, my thoughts clear.

How closely tied together the attempted murder of the General and the kidnapping of Dr. Buffington and his daughter were, I didn't yet know. But there was no longer

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