QUAEQUE IPSA MISERRIMA VIDI TV

Something clicked inside the tape-measure's housing, and it suddenly began to run rapidly back into its case, the numbers and hashmarks blurring by. Eighteen feet an even six yards.Ī soft chuckle came wafting out of the drain, followed by a low whisper that was almost reproachful: 'Beverly, Beverly, Beverly. Hadn't she known? Hadn't she known something like this was going to happen? She stared at the flowing tape, her eyes wide, her mouth a sagging O of fear-fear, yes, but no surprise. and then she was able to push it forward again.Īnd suddenly the tape began to run through her hands by itself, as if something down there was pulling the other end. She could see its tip wiggling against the bottom of this wider pipe, which would have a baked ceramic surface. She wiggled it again, and the tape, thin enough to be limber, made a faint eerie sound that reminded her a little bit of the way a saw sounds when you bend it back and forth across your legs.

and even as she saw it, the tape bound up again. She saw the end of the tape going straight down now, descending into the cellar. She imagined the head of the tape, with its small steel buttplate no bigger than a fingernail, sliding farther and farther into the darkness, and part of her mind screamed What are you doing? She did not ignore that voice. Down there where the sun never shines and the night never stops, she thought. In her mind's eye she saw it sliding through the black bore of the pipe, picking up some muck, scraping away flakes of rust. She watched the yellow tape slipping out of the chromed-steel case, which had been worn black on the sides by her father's big hand. Sixteen inches now, then two feet, then three. She wiggled it, pushing gently at the same time, and eventually the tape began to feed into the drain again. It stopped, bound up in the elbow-bend under the sink, Beverly supposed. It went down smoothly-like a sword into the gullet of a 'county fair sideshow performer. She waited for the voices.Ī little shuddery sigh came from her, and she began to feed the thin steel tape into the drain. She stood there for some time, her legs as cold as marble inside her jeans, her nipples feeling sharp enough and hard enough to cut paper, her lips dead dry. She went to the bathroom basin and looked down into the dark eye of the drain. Somewhere, far distant, it seemed, she could hear Mrs Doyon yelling for her boy Jim to get in out of the road, right now. She folded this into one cold hand and went down to the bathroom. Among them was a pocket tape, the kind that runs out a long yellow tongue of inches. She went back to the kitchen cupboard over the sink, where her father kept his tools.

QUAEQUE IPSA MISERRIMA VIDI TV

So she went into the living room and turned on the TV and five minutes later she turned it off while Dick Clark was showing how much oil just one Stri-Dex medicated pad could take off the face of your average teenager ('If you think you can get clean with just soap and water,' Dick said, holding the dirty pad up to the glassy eye of the camera so that every teenager in America could get a good look, 'you ought to take a good look at this.'). She stood up and looked down toward the bathroom.

She put them under the kitchen sink and closed the cupboard. They all laughed then, and it was a little easier.īeverly left them outside the Kleen-Kloze and took the rags back home by herself. 'Will you at least go with us to talk to him?' Bev asked. I just don't want to be involved in something that will land me in the nuthatch.' Because he could say none of these things, he just reiterated: 'Being scared isn't the problem.

Quaeque ipsa miserrima vidi