welcome to bedtime scaries perhaps I can make a pun here concerning you are what you eat but that would be a bit insensitive don't you think tonight's tale is gray matter by Stephen [Music] King they had been predicting a Norther all week and along about Thursday we got it a real screamer that piled up 8 in by 400 in the afternoon and showed no signs of slowing down the usual five or six were gathered around the reliable in Henry's Night Owl which is the only little store on this side of the Banger that stays open right around the clock Henry don't do huge business mostly it amounts to selling the college kids their beer and wine but he gets by and it's a place for us old duffers on social security to get together and talk about who's died lately and how the world's going going to hell this afternoon Henry was at the counter Bill pelum birdie Connors Carl Littlefield and me was tipped up by the stove outside not a car was moving on Ohio Street and the plows was having hard going the wind was scking drifts across what looked like the backbone of a dinosaur Henry only had three customers all afternoon that is if you want to count blind Eddie Eddie's about 70 and he ain't completely blind runs into things mostly comes in once or twice a week and sticks a loaf of bread under his coat and walks out with an expression on his face like there you stupid sons of fooled you again biry once asked Henry why he never put a stop to it I'll tell you Henry said few years back the Air Force wanted $20 million to rig up a flying model of an airplane they had planned out well it cost them 75 million and then the damn thing wouldn't fly that happened 10 years ago when blind Eddie and myself were considerably younger and I voted for the woman who sponsored that bill blind daddy voted against her and since then I've been buying his bread pry didn't look like he quite followed all that but he set back to Muse over it now the door opened again letting in a blast of cold gray air outside and a young kid came in stamping snow off his boots I placed him after a second he was Richie grenadine kid and he looked like he just kissed the wrong end of the baby his Adams Apple was going up and down and his face was the color of old oil cloth Mr Parmley he says to Henry his eyeballs rolling around in his head like ball bearings you you got to come you got to take him as beer and come I I can't stand to go back there I'm scared now you slow down Henry says taking off his white butcher's apron and coming around the counter what's the matter your dad been on a drunk I realized when he said that that Richie hadn't been in for quite some time usually he'd be by once a day to pick up a case of whatever beer was going cheapest at the time a big fat man with JS like pork butts and ham Hawk arms Richie always was a pig about his beer but he handled it okay when he was working at The Sawmill in Clifton then something happened a pulper piled a bad load or maybe Richie just made it out that way and Richie was off work free and easy with that Sawmill company paying him compensation something on his back anyway he got awful fat he ain't been in lately although once in a while I'd seen his boy come in for Richie's nightly case nice enough boy Henry sold him the beer for he knew it was only the boy doing as his father said dead he's been on a drunk the boy was saying now but that ain't the trouble it's it's so Lord it it's awful Henry saw he was going to ball so he says real quick Carl will you watch things for a minute sure now Timmy you come back in the stock room and tell me what's what he led the boy away and Carl went around behind the counter and sat on Henry's stool no one said anything for quite a while we could hear him back there Henry's deep slow voice and then Timmy grenadine High one speaking very fast and then the boy commenced to cry and Bill pum cleared his throat and started filling up his pipe I ain't seen Richie for a couple months I said bull grunted no law he was in um near end of October Carl said near Halloween bought a case of Schlitz beer he was getting an awful meaty there wasn't much more to say the boy was still crying but he was talking at the same time outside the wind kept on whooping and yowling and the radio said we'd have another 6 in or so by morning it was mid January and made me wonder if anyone had seen Richie since October besides his boy that is the talking went on for quite a while but finally Henry and the boy came out the boy had taken his coat off but Henry had put his on the boy was kind of hitching in his chest the way you do when the worst is passed but his eyes was red when he glanced at you he looked down at the floor Henry looked worried thought I'd send Timmy here upstairs and have my wife cook him up a toast of cheese or something maybe a couple of you fellas like to go around Richie's place with me Timmy says uh he wants some beer he gave me the money he tried to smile but it was a pretty sick of fair and he soon gave up sure birdie said what kind of beer I'll go fetch her get Harrow Supreme andry said we got some cut down boxes back there I got up too it would have to be birdie in me Carl's arthritis gets something awful on days like this and Billy pelum won't have much use of his right arm anymore birdie got four six packs of horos and I packed them into a box while Henry took the boy upstairs into the apartment overhead well he straightened that out with his misses and came back down looking over his shoulder once to make sure the upstair door was closed Billy spoke up first fairly busting what's up has Richie been working the kid over no Henry said I just assume not saying anything just yet it uh it sound crazy I will show you some though the money Timmy had to pay for the beer with he shed $ four bills out of his pocket holding them up by the corner and I don't blame him they was all covered with a gray slimy stuff that looked like the scum on top of bad preserves he laid them down on the counter with a funny smile and said to Carl don't let anybody touch him not if what that kid says is even half right and then he went around to the sink by the meat counter and washed his hands I got up put on my pea coat and scarf and buttoned up it was no good taking a car Richie lived in an apartment building down on curv Street which was as close to straight up and down as the law allows and it's the last place the plows touch as we were going out Bill pum called after us watch out now Henry just nodded and put the case of horos on the little hand cart he keeps by the door and out we trundled the wind hit us like a saw blade and right away I pulled my scarf up over my ears we paused in the doorway just for a second while birdie pulled on his gloves he had a pain sort of wise on his face and I knew how he felt it was all well for younger fellows to go out skiing all day and running those godamn wasp wi snowmobiles half the night but when you get up over 70 without an oil change you feel that Northeast wind around your heart I don't want to scare you boy Henry said with that queer sort of revolted smile still in his mouth but I'm going to show you this all the same and I'm going to tell you what that boy told me while we walk up there because I want you to know you see and he pulled out a 45 caliber hog leg out of his coat pocket a pistol he kept loaded and ready under the counter ever since he went to 24 hours a day back in 1958 I don't know where he got it but but I do know one time he flashed it at a stickup guy the fell just turned around and bolted right out the door Henry was a cool one all right I saw him throw out a college kid that came in one time and gave him a hard time about cashing a check that kid walked away like his ass was on Sideways and he had to crap well I only tell you that cuz Henry wanted birdie and me to know he meant business and we did too so we sit out bent into the wind like washer woman Henry trundling the cart and telling us what the boy had said the wind was trying to rip the words away before we could hear him but we got most of it more than we wanted to I was damn glad Henry had his Frenchman's pecker stowed away in his coat pocket the kid said it must have been the beer you know how you can get a bad can every now and again flat or smelly or green as the Pea stains in an Irish man's underwear a fellow once told me that all it it takes is a tiny hole to let in the bacteria that'll do some damn strange things a hole can be so small that the beer won't hardly dribble out but the bacteria can get in and Beer's good food for some of those bugs anyway the kid said Richie brought back a case of golden light just like always that night in October and sat down to polish it off while Timmy did his homework Timmy was just about ready for bed when he hears Richie Say Jesus Christ that ain't right Timmy says what's that pop that beer Richie said God that's the worst taste I ever had in my mouth most people would wonder why in the name of God he drank it if it tasted so bad but then most people have never seen Richie grenadine go to his beer I was down in Wally Spa one afternoon and I saw him win the god damnest bet he bet a fell he could drink 22 bit glasses of beer in 1 minute nobody local could take him up but this salesman from Mont piler laid down a $20 bill and Richie covered him he drank all 20 with 7 Seconds to spare although when he walked out he was more than three sales to the wind so I expect Richie had most of that bad can in his gut before his brain could warm him I'm going to puke Richie say look out but by the time he got to the Head it had passed off and that was the end of it boy said he spelt the can and it smelt like something crawled in there and died there was a little gray dribble around the top too two days later The Boy comes home from school and there's Richie sitting in front of the TV and watching afternoon tear jerkers with every godamn shade in the place pulled down what's up Timmy asks for Richie don't hardly ever roll in before 9: I'm watching TV Richie says and I don't seem to want to go out today Timmy turned on the light over the sink and Richie yelled at him and turn off that fraking light so Timmy did not asking how he's going to do his homework in the dark when Richie's in that mood you don't ask him for nothing go out and give me a case Richie says money's on the table when the kid gets back his dad's still sitting in the dark only now it's dark outside too and the TV's off the kid starts getting the creeps well who wouldn't nothing but a dark flat and your daddy sitting in the corner like a big lump so he puts a beer on the table no and Richie don't like it so cold it spikes his forehead and when he gets close to his old man he starts to notice a a kind of rotten smell like an old cheese someone left standing on the counter over the weekend he don't say or go blind though as the old man was never what you'd call a cleanly soul instead he goes into his room and shuts his door and does his homework and after a while he hears the TV start to go and Richie's popping the top of his first one of the evening and for two weeks or so that's the way things went the kid got up in the morning and went to school and when he got home Richie be in front of the television and beer money on the table the flat was smelling ranker and ranker too Richie wouldn't have the shades up at all and about the middle of November he made Timmy stopped studying in his room said he couldn't abide the light under the door so Timmy started going down the block to a friend's house after getting his dad the beer then one day when Richie came home from school it was about 4:00 and pretty near dark already Richie says turn on the light the kid turned on the light over the sink and damn if Richie ain't all wrapped in a blanket look Richie says and one hand creeps out from under the blanket only it ain't a hand at all something gray is all the kid could tell Henry it don't look like a hand at all just a gray lump well Timmy grenadine was scared bad he said pop what's happening to you and Richie says I don't know but it doesn't hurt it feels kind of nice so Timmy says I'm going to call Dr westf and the blanket starts to tremble all over like something awful was shaking all over under there and Richie says don't you dare if you do I'll touch you and you'll end up looking just like this and he slides a blanket down over his face for just a minute by there we were up to the corner of harlo and curve Street and I was even colder than the temperature had been on Henry's Orange Crush the ometer when we came out a person doesn't hardly want to believe such things and yet there's still strange things in the world I once knew a fellow named George Kelo who worked for the Banger public works department he spent 15 years fixing water Ms and mending electricity cables and all that and then one day he just up and quit not 2 years before his retirement Frankie halderman who knew him said George went down into a sewer pipe on Essex laughing and joking just like always and came up 15 minutes later with his hair just as white as snow and his eyes starting to look like he just looked through a window into hell he walked straight down to the BPW garage and punched his clock and went down to Wally spa and started drinking it killed him 2 years later Frankie said he tried to talk to him about it and George said something one time and that was when he was pretty well Blotto turned around in his stool George did and asked Frankie halderman if he You' ever seen a spider as big as a good-sized dog setting in a web full of kittens and such all wrapped up in silk thread well what could he say to that I'm not saying there's truth in it but I am saying there's things in the corners of the world that would drive a man insane to look him right in the face so we just stood there on the corner a minute in spite of the wind that was whooping up the street what' he see birdie asked he said he could still see his dad Henry answered but he said it was like he was buried in Gray jelly and it was uh all kind of mashed together said his clothes were sticking in and out of his skin like like they just melted to his body holy Jesus birdie said and then he covered right up again and started screaming at the kid to turn off the light like he was a fungus I said yeah Henry said sort of like that you keep that pistol handy birdie said yeah I think I will and with that we started to trundle up curve Street the apartment house where Richie grenadine had his flat was almost at the top of the hill one of those big Victorian monsters that were built by The Pulp and Paper Barons at the turn of the century they've just about all been turned into apartment houses now when birdie got his breath he told us Richie lived on the third floor under that top Gable that jutted out like an eyebrow I took the chance to ask Henry what happened to the kid after that along about the third week in November the kid came back one afternoon to find Richie had gone one further than just pulling the shades down he'd taken and nailed blankets across every window in the place it was starting to stink worse too kind of a mushy stink the way fruit gets when it goes to ferment with yeast a week or so after that Richie got the kid to start heating his beer on the stove can you feature that the kid all by himself in an apartment with his dad turning into well into something and heating his beer and then having to listen to him it drinking it with an awful thick slurping sounds the way an old man eats his chowder can you imagine it and that's the way things went until today when the kids school let out early because of the storm the boy says he went right home Henry told us there's no light in The Upstairs Hall at all the boy claims his dad must have snuck out one night and broke it so he had to sort of creep down to his door well he heard something moving around in there and it suddenly pops into his mind that he doesn't know what Richie does all day through the week he ain't seen his dad stir out of the chair for almost a month and a man's got to sleep and go to the bathroom sometime there's a Judas hole in the middle of the door it's supposed to have a latch on the inside to fasten it shut but it's been busted ever since they lived there so the kid slides up through the door real easy and pushed it open a bit with his thumb and pokes his eye up to it by now we were at the foot of the steps and the house was looming over us like a high ugly face with those windows in the third floor for eyes I looked up there and sure enough those two windows were just as black as pitch like somebody's put blankets over them or painted them up it took him a minute to get his eye adjusted to the Gloom and then he sees a great big gray lump not like a man at all slithering over the floor leaving a gray slimy trail behind it and then it sort of snaked out an arm or something like an arm arm and pried the board off in the wall and took out a cat Henry stopped for a second birdie was beating his hands together and it was God awful cold there on the street but none of us was ready to go up just yet a dead cat Henry recomened that had putrification the boy said it looked all swo up stiff and there was little white things crawling all over it stop birdie said for Christ's sake and then his dad ate it I tried to swallow and something tasted greasy in my throat that's when Timmy closed the peephole andry finished softly and ran I don't think I can go up there birdie said Henry didn't say anything just looked from birdie to me and back again I guess we'd better I said we got Richie's beer birdie didn't say anything to that so we went up the steps and in through the front hall door I smelled it right off you know how a Cider House smells in the summer you never get the smell of apples out but in the fall it's all right cuz it smells Tangy and sharp enough to ream your nose out right but in the summer it just smells mean the smell was like that but a little bit worse there was one one light on in the lower Hall a mean yellow thing in a frosted glass that threw a glow as thin as buttermilk and those stairs that went up into the Shadows Henry bumped the cart to a stop and while he was lifting out the case of beer I thumbed the button at the foot of the stairs that controlled the second floor Landing bulb but it was busted just as the boy had said birdie quavered I I'll lug the beer you just take care of that pistol Henry didn't argue he handed it over and we started up Henry first and then me then birdie with the case in His Arms by the time we fetched the second floor Landing the stink was just that much worse rotted apples all fermented and under that an even uglier stink when I lived out in Levant I had a dog one time Rex his name was and he was a good mut but not very wise about cars He got lick one afternoon while I was at work and he crawled under the house and died there my Christ what a stink I finally had to go under and haul him out with pole that other stench was like that fly blown and putrid just as dirty as a boring cob up till then I'd kept thinking maybe it was some sort of joke but I saw it wasn't Lord why don't the neighbors kick up Henry I asked what neighbors Henry asked and he was smiling that queer smile again I looked around and saw that the hall had a sort of Dusty unused look and the door of all three second floor Apartments was closed and locked up it was a landlord I wonder Bry asked resting case on the nle post and getting his breath Gau surprised he don't kick him out who'd go up there and evict him andry asked you birdie didn't say nothing presently we started up the next flight which was even narrower and steeper than the last it was getting hotter too it sounded like every Radiator in the place was clanking and hissing the smell was awful and I started to feel like someone was stirring my guts with the stick at the top was a short Hall and one door with a little Judas hole in the middle of it birdie made a soft little cry and whispered out out look what we're walking in I looked down and saw all this slimy stuff on the hall floor in little puddles it looked like there' been a carpet once but the gry stuff had eaten it all away Henry walked down to the door and we went in after him I don't know about birdie but I was shaking in my shoes Henry never hesitated though he raised up that gun and beat on the door with the butt of it Richie he called and his voice didn't sound a bit scared although his face was deadly pale this is Henry parmy from from down at the night owl I brought your beer there wasn't any answer for perhaps a full minute and then a voice said where's Timmy where's my boy I almost ran right then that voice wasn't humid at all it was all Queer and low and bubbly like someone talking through a mouth full of he's at my store Henry said having a decent meal he's just as skinny as a slack cat Richie there wasn't nothing for a while and then some horrible squishing noises like a man in rubber boots walking through mud then that decayed voice spoke right through the other side of the door open the door and shove the beer through it said only you got to pull the ring tabs first I I can't in a minute Henry said what kind of shape you in Richie never mind that the voice said and it was horribly eager just push in the beer and go this ain't just dead cats anymore is it Henry said and he sounded sad he wasn't holding the gun butt up anymore now it was business end first suddenly in a flash of light I made the the mental connection Henry had already made perhaps even as Timmy was telling his story the smell of Decay and rot seemed to double in my nostrils when I remembered two young girls and some old Salvation Army wno had disappeared in the town during the last 3 weeks or so all after dark send it in or I'll come out and get it the voice said Henry gestured us back and we went I guess you'd better rich he cocked his piece there was nothing then not for a long time to tell the truth I began to feel as if it was all over and then that door burst open so sudden and so hard it actually bulged before slamming out against the wall and out came Richie it was just a second just a second before birdie and me was down those stairs like school kids four and five at a time and out the door into the snow slipping and sliding going down we heard Henry fire three times the reports loud as grenades in the closed hallways of that empty cursed house what we saw in that one or two seconds will last me a lifetime or whatever's left of it it was like a huge gray wave of jelly jelly that looked like a man and leaving a trail of slime behind it but that wasn't the worst the eyes were flat and yellow and wild with no human soul in them only there wasn't two there were four and right down the center of the thing betwix the two pair of eyes was a white fibrous line with a kind of pulsing pink flesh showing through like the slit in a Hog's belly it was dividing you see dividing in two birdie and I didn't say nothing to each other going back to the store I don't know what was going through his mind but I know well enough what was in mine a multiplication table 2 * 2 is 4 4 * 2 is 8 8 * 2 is 16 16 * 2 is we got back Carl and Bill pum jumped up and started asking questions right off we wouldn't answer neither of us we just turned around and waited to see if Henry was going to walk in out of the snow I was up to 32,768 * 2 is the end of the human race and so we sat there cozied up to all that beer and waited to see which one was going to finally come back and here we still sit I hope it's Henry I surely do sleep tight