Read Ebook: Thirty Degrees Cattywonkus by Bell James

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Ebook has 723 lines and 119055 words, and 15 pages

He and Melinee had not made any plans for developing the second floor. It was evident that his mother would one day have to live with them, and her own invalid sister, in time. And then whatever children there might be. But so far he and Melinee had actually made only one trip up there with the agent.

In fact, there was no electrical connection to the upstairs whatever. Ernie remembered the layout, however, and made his way up the stairs that creaked in defiance of the agent's compliments. When he reached the top in the pitch blackness, he felt for the wall.

A strange coldness not at all common to the summer season moved out along the hallway. It seemed to hover around him, curious of the intruder.

Imagination.

He walked on, an inch at a time, for he remembered a small table about half way along. But he never felt the table. Ernie reached the end of the hall before he was sure--and where had the table gone?

He returned along the opposite wall until he felt the small square paneling. Then a brass knob. He pulled it open, half expecting the end of the world. And at that point, a bluish haze filled with gaseous, luminous smoke rose out and blinded him.

When the obnoxious odor of the smoke was gone, he took a deep breath and stuck his head in again. Directly below him sat three men, fat and jovial, shaking their pipes at one another. There was a row of red and white lighted tubes, not unlike fluorescents, a mahoganylike counter that might pass for a bar, and a row of bottles against a mirror.

The dimensions immediately struck Ernie as all wrong. It was far bigger than the hall closet where it was supposed to be. In fact, the portion he saw seemed to be the focal point of a large dance hall or bar room. But the most obvious quality of the scene was the tilted floor. The whole thing seemed to be about thirty degrees lopsided.

Ernie could go immediately back to bed and tell of his dream tomorrow, or he could make things worse by yelling at the men below.

It wasn't necessary to yell. As if they had seen him through the tops of their balding heads, they motioned to the bartender, then pointed squarely at his vantage point. Ernie felt the quavering impulse to run, and yet even in a nightmare you try desperately to learn the ending.

The man in the white coat set the ladder firmly against the floor so that the top ended in the slightest kind of tilt near the chute door. It was not Ernie's intention to crawl through the door, but the way the man motioned, and the way the men turned briefly and waved, simply as if they might be old acquaintances waiting for him in a hotel lobby--it was, to say the very least, overwhelming.

There was a fragrance, an allure about the room. It smelled of apples and tobacco and brought nostalgic thoughts of college days and--and faint wisps of the past that were not nostalgic. He thought of Melinee. He really ought to tell her about this.

The chalky finger motioning at him, the unconcerned old men on the sofa--and the table. It was the antique table, missing from the upstairs hall, that lured him in. There it sat against the far wall. He grabbed a jutting two-by-four and twisted his body through the opening.

The ladder must have been shoved to one side, or perhaps it was the claustrophobic effect of going through the small opening--anyway, something. It turned his mind, his body, wrong-side out. Like the squeezing out of a wet mop by a steamroller.

At the foot of the ladder, the man in the bartender's jacket led him to the three men. One of them, exceptionally fat, jovial, excused himself politely and took Ernie aside.

"You look pale, Ernie," he said. "Having trouble?"

Groggily, Ernie looked about him. "It's this room. It's lopsided. I think a good thirty degrees cattywonkus."

The man doused a cigar and a quick frown crossed his brow. "Good point. Very good point. Come with me, Ernie."

Ernie looked; the other men paid him no mind. The little man waddled through a maze of foundation columns, as if the whole world were suspended above them. He walked behind the bar to a small glass-encased desk, U-shaped and covered with dials all reading A-B-C-D.

"Kronkite!" the man called. A whirring inside the room shut off. A man with goggles and a metal halo stuck his head out the door. "Kronkite, Ernie here says we are thirty degrees off. Can you shift the equilibrium? Frankly, I hadn't noticed it."

With a silent nod, the man named Kronkite shut the transparent door, turned three knobs, a bell clanged and the floor of the whole affair sank some thirty degrees on one side, rose thirty on the other. Then the whirring in the chamber resumed and Ernie was led back to the bar.

"Have yourself a drink, man," his host coaxed.

"I don't need one," Ernie said. "Listen, before we go on, just one question--"

The man smiled pleasantly.

"Where the heck am I? And what is this going on in my basement?"

The smile continued. It was maddening.

"Well?" said Ernie.

"You are here," the man finally said. "And don't be silly, Ernie. Your house has no basement."

"Make it a triple," the little man called, and the bartender smiled as if his face hurt.

There was a pained expression on Ernie. He sank his head into his arms.

"Cheer up," the man said. "It isn't worth all that."

"What isn't?"

"Be happy, man."

"I'll be happy when I get out of here, but I'll be hilarious when I find out the score--and I plan to be hilarious before I get happy. Is that clear?"

"You talk as if you had been drinking already, man. Snap out of it. I like men with clear heads."

It was not only a delaying tactic, Ernie thought; it was plainly a case of nerve-busting. They were going to force it out of him. He had already conceded they were not a gang of thieves using his basement for a hideaway; they were not digging a secret tunnel for the Defense Department.

"You like men with clear heads? What am I, some sort of recruit?"

"So where is this?"

"This is your house, of course, but we're not quite there yet. We're in what you would call--oh, another dimension."

Ernie reached for the drink and sniffed it. Its smell fitted the situation. "And what does that mean?"

"Oh, you and I have lived in the same vicinity all our lives, even crossed each other's paths, but we are in different dimensions--different worlds in the same place."

"You mean like Mars and Earth?"

Ernie jumped up and started for the ladder. "I'm getting out of here--"

"Don't be a fool! Climb that ladder and you'll butt your skull in!"

"I came through the hatch. I'll leave through the hatch."

"But we've shifted thirty degrees. You told us to. Now the top of the ladder is thirty degrees away from the door of the laundry chute, which is quite impossible to reach, my friend, because there is perhaps dirt and a foundation and everything else in the way. We'd have to tear out our own structure and gouge into yours. This we cannot do. Too expensive."

Ernie had heard enough. He climbed the ladder to the top, butted his head and climbed down. "Okay. You win. What's the score?"

"You and Marsha," the man said.

"Melinee," Ernie corrected.

"Melinee in your dimension, Marsha in ours. You and she exist in our dimension as well. Same types, same characteristics inwardly. But not the same outwardly. Different hair, different name--your own features were to be slightly different here."

Ernie sat down on the sofa beside the two old men. He buried his head. "This is the other dimension? Then where is the other me?"

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