The Street That Wasnt There | Page 6

tell him.
He moved through the hall to the door, emerged into the street. On the
walk he looked skyward, trying to make out the sun. But there wasn't
any sun ... only an all pervading grayness that shrouded everything ...
not a gray fog, but a gray emptiness that seemed devoid of life, of any
movement.
The walk led to his gate and there it ended, but as he moved forward
the sidewalk came into view and the house ahead loomed out of the
gray, but a house with differences.
He moved forward rapidly. Visibility extended only a few feet and as
he approached them the houses materialized like two dimensional
pictures without perspective, like twisted cardboard soldiers lining up
for review on a misty morning.

Once he stopped and looked back and saw that the grayness had closed
in behind him. The houses were wiped out, the sidewalk faded into
nothing.
He shouted, hoping to attract attention. But his voice frightened him. It
seemed to ricochet up and into the higher levels of the sky, as if a giant
door had been opened to a mighty room high above him.
He went on until he came to the corner of Lexington. There, on the
curb, he stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker there but he did
not realize how close it was until he glanced down at his feet and saw
there was nothing, nothing at all beyond the curbstone. No dull gleam
of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. It was as if all eternity ended here at
the corner of Maple and Lexington.
With a wild cry, Mr. Chambers turned and ran. Back down the street he
raced, coat streaming after him in the wind, bowler hat bouncing on his
head.
Panting, he reached the gate and stumbled up the walk, thankful that it
still was there.
On the stoop he stood for a moment, breathing hard. He glanced back
over his shoulder and a queer feeling of inner numbness seemed to well
over him. At that moment the gray nothingness appeared to thin ... the
enveloping curtain fell away, and he saw....
Vague and indistinct, yet cast in stereoscopic outline, a gigantic city
was lined against the darkling sky. It was a city fantastic with cubed
domes, spires, and aerial bridges and flying buttresses. Tunnel-like
streets, flanked on either side by shining metallic ramps and runways,
stretched endlessly to the vanishing point. Great shafts of multicolored
light probed huge streamers and ellipses above the higher levels.
And beyond, like a final backdrop, rose a titanic wall. It was from that
wall ... from its crenelated parapets and battlements that Mr. Chambers
felt the eyes peering at him.

Thousands of eyes glaring down with but a single purpose.
And as he continued to look, something else seemed to take form above
that wall. A design this time, that swirled and writhed in the ribbons of
radiance and rapidly coalesced into strange geometric features, without
definite line or detail. A colossal face, a face of indescribable power
and evil, it was, staring down with malevolent composure.
* * * * *
Then the city and the face slid out of focus; the vision faded like a
darkened magic-lantern, and the grayness moved in again.
Mr. Chambers pushed open the door of his house. But he did not lock it.
There was no need of locks ... not any more.
A few coals of fire still smouldered in the grate and going there, he
stirred them up, raked away the ash, piled on more wood. The flames
leaped merrily, dancing in the chimney's throat.
Without removing his hat and coat, he sank exhausted in his favorite
chair, closed his eyes then opened them again.
He sighed with relief as he saw the room was unchanged. Everything in
its accustomed place: the clock, the lamp, the elephant ash tray, the
marine print on the wall.
Everything was as it should be. The clock measured the silence with its
measured ticking; it chimed abruptly and the vase sent up its usual
sympathetic vibration.
This was his room, he thought. Rooms acquire the personality of the
person who lives in them, become a part of him. This was his world,
his own private world, and as such it would be the last to go.
But how long could he ... his brain ... maintain its existence?
Mr. Chambers stared at the marine print and for a moment a little
breath of reassurance returned to him. They couldn't take this away.

The rest of the world might dissolve because there was insufficient
power of thought to retain its outward form.
But this room was his. He alone had furnished it. He alone, since he
had first planned the house's building, had lived