The Third Level by Jack Finney

Author:Jack Finney [Finney, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Rinehart & Company, Inc.
Published: 2011-08-10T10:57:05+00:00

Have you ever noticed that once you decide you're going to give someone the business, you can't wait to start? And you can't lay it on too strong. Next morning at the office, I felt a kind of tough, hard cockiness about my decisions, and I asked Ted to lunch. He's a wise guy, a sneerer, and I actually had a ghost story I could prove; undoubtedly I was the first man in history who had the ghost himself to back up his story, and Ted was the man I wanted to back out on a limb, and then break it off.

In the restaurant booth he listened, true to type, with an amused and pitying sneer on his face, and I wondered why I'd ever thought twice about giving him even the least consideration. I didn't tell him, of course, what I'd actually been worrying over at night, but the rest was accurate, and occasionally, as I talked, he'd shake his head in mock pity, his idea of fine, rich humor. Then, when I finished, I let him sound off. I let him bray that mule laugh and listened patiently while he spouted theories about hallucinations, the ability of the mind to fool itself and the kind of glib psychiatric jargon people like Ted talk these days. He was the first of the many people who have assured me that I “dreamed” or “imagined” Gruener's ghost.

I let him rave, clear through dessert, knowing he was squirming to get back to the office and tell everybody, with a phony worried look, that I was “working too hard,” and then wait for them to ask why. Finally, when he'd talked enough, I had him. I challenged him to go out to Gruener's with me that evening, and he had to say yes; he'd insulted me too much to say anything else. Then we just sat there, drinking coffee and stealing looks at each other.

People like Ted have a sort of low animal cunning, and pretty soon his eyes narrowed, and, excusing himself, he got up. A minute later he was back, beckoning slyly with his forefinger, like a stupid kid. He led me out to the telephone booth, and there, lying open at the G's, was a Brooklyn directory. Show me, he said.

It wasn't there. The name Harris L. Gruener simply was not in the telephone book, that's all; and that afternoon at the office, people smiled when I went by, and once, when I was standing at the water cooler, someone called Boo! in a quavering, very comical voice. It might sound funny, but it drove me crazy — I knew what I'd seen — and a million dollars in cash couldn't have stopped me from doing what I did; I walked out of that office and headed for Brooklyn.

To my everlasting relief, the house was still there, looking just the same, and when I pushed the button, the musical chime sounded inside. No one answered; so I walked around at the side, and, sure enough, there was the rusty wire gate, and there was young Mrs.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.