The Day Time Stopped Moving Read online

  Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

  THE DAY TIME STOPPED MOVING

  By BRADNER BUCKNER

  _All Dave Miller wanted to do was commit suicide in peace. He tried, but the things that happened after he'd pulled the trigger were all wrong. Like everyone standing around like statues. No St. Peter, no pearly gate, no pitchforks or halos. He might just as well have saved the bullet!_

  Dave Miller would never have done it, had he been in his right mind. TheMillers were not a melancholy stock, hardly the sort of people youexpect to read about in the morning paper who have taken their lives thenight before. But Dave Miller was drunk--abominably, roaringly so--andthe barrel of the big revolver, as he stood against the sink, made aring of coldness against his right temple.

  Dawn was beginning to stain the frosty kitchen windows. In the faintlight, the letter lay a gray square against the drain-board tiles. Withthe melodramatic gesture of the very drunk, Miller had scrawled acrossthe envelope:

  "This is why I did it!"

  Dave Miller pushed with all his strength, but the girlwas as unmovable as Gibraltar.]

  He had found Helen's letter in the envelope when he staggered into theirbedroom fifteen minutes ago--at a quarter after five. As had frequentlyhappened during the past year, he'd come home from the store a littlelate ... about twelve hours late, in fact. And this time Helen had donewhat she had long threatened to do. She had left him.

  The letter was brief, containing a world of heartbreak and broken hopes.

  "I don't mind having to scrimp, Dave. No woman minds that if she feelsshe is really helping her husband over a rough spot. When business wentbad a year ago, I told you I was ready to help in any way I could. Butyou haven't let me. You quit fighting when things got difficult, and putin all your money and energy on liquor and horses and cards. I couldstand being married to a drunkard, Dave, but not to a coward ..."

  So she was trying to show him. But Miller told himself he'd show herinstead. Coward, eh? Maybe this would teach her a lesson! Hell of a lotof help she'd been! Nag at him every time he took a drink. Holler bloodymurder when he put twenty-five bucks on a horse, with a chance to makefive hundred. What man wouldn't do those things?

  His drug store was on the skids. Could he be blamed for drinking alittle too much, if alcohol dissolved the morbid vapors of his mind?

  Miller stiffened angrily, and tightened his finger on the trigger. Buthe had one moment of frank insight just before the hammer dropped andbrought the world tumbling about his ears. It brought with it arealization that the whole thing was his fault. Helen was right--he wasa coward. There was a poignant ache in his heart. She'd been as loyal asthey came, he knew that.

  He could have spent his nights thinking up new business tricks, insteadof swilling whiskey. Could have gone out of his way to be pleasant tocustomers, not snap at them when he had a terrific hangover. And evenMiller knew nobody ever made any money on the horses--at least, not whenhe needed it. But horses and whiskey and business had become tragicallyconfused in his mind; so here he was, full of liquor and madness, with agun to his head.

  Then again anger swept his mind clean of reason, and he threw his chinup and gripped the gun tight.

  "Run out on me, will she!" he muttered thickly. "Well--this'll showher!"

  In the next moment the hammer fell ... and Dave Miller had "shown her."

  Miller opened his eyes with a start. As plain as black on white, he'dheard a bell ring--the most familiar sound in the world, too. It was theunmistakable tinkle of his cash register.

  "Now, how in hell--" The thought began in his mind; and then he sawwhere he was.

  The cash register was right in front of him! It was open, and on themarble slab lay a customer's five-spot. Miller's glance strayed up andaround him.

  He was behind the drug counter, all right. There were a man and a girlsipping cokes at the fountain, to his right; the magazine racks by theopen door; the tobacco counter across from the fountain. And rightbefore him was a customer.

  Good Lord! he thought. Was all this a--a dream?

  Sweat oozed out on his clammy forehead. That stuff of Herman's that hehad drunk during the game--it had had a rank taste, but he wouldn't havethought anything short of marihuana could produce such hallucinations ashe had just had. Wild conjectures came boiling up from the bottom ofMiller's being.

  How did he get behind the counter? Who was the woman he was waiting on?What--

  The woman's curious stare was what jarred him completely into thepresent. Get rid of her! was his one thought. Then sit down behind thescenes and try to figure it all out.

  His hand poised over the cash drawer. Then he remembered he didn't knowhow much he was to take out of the five. Avoiding the woman's glance, hemuttered:

  "Let's see, now, that was--uh--how much did I say?"

  The woman made no answer. Miller cleared his throat, said uncertainly:

  "I beg your pardon, ma'am--did I say--seventy-five cents?"

  It was just a feeler, but the woman didn't even answer to that. And itwas right then that Dave Miller noticed the deep silence that brooded inthe store.

  Slowly his head came up and he looked straight into the woman's eyes.She returned him a cool, half-smiling glance. But her eyes neitherblinked nor moved. Her features were frozen. Lips parted, teeth showinga little, the tip of her tongue was between her even white teeth asthough she had started to say "this" and stopped with the syllableunspoken.

  Muscles began to rise behind Miller's ears. He could feel his hairstiffen like filings drawn to a magnet. His glance struggled to the sodafountain. What he saw there shook him to the core of his being.

  The girl who was drinking a coke had the glass to her lips, butapparently she wasn't sipping the liquid. Her boy friend's glass was onthe counter. He had drawn on a cigarette and exhaled the gray smoke.That smoke hung in the air like a large, elongated balloon with thesmall end disappearing between his lips. While Miller stared, the smokedid not stir in the slightest.

  There was something unholy, something supernatural, about this scene!

  With apprehension rippling down his spine, Dave Miller reached acrossthe cash register and touched the woman on the cheek. The flesh waswarm, but as hard as flint. Tentatively, the young druggist pushedharder; finally, shoved with all his might. For all the result, thewoman might have been a two-ton bronze statue. She neither budged norchanged expression.

  Panic seized Miller. His voice hit a high hysterical tenor as he calledto his soda-jerker.

  "Pete! _Pete!_" he shouted. "What in God's name is wrong here!"

  The blond youngster, with a towel wadded in a glass, did not stir.Miller rushed from the back of the store, seized the boy by theshoulders, tried to shake him. But Pete was rooted to the spot.

  Miller knew, now, that what was wrong was something greater than ahallucination or a hangover. He was in some kind of trap. His firstthought was to rush home and see if Helen was there. There was a greatsense of relief when he thought of her. Helen, with her grave blue eyesand understanding manner, would listen to him and know what was thematter.

  * * * * *

  He left the haunted drug store at a run, darted around the corner and upthe street to his car. But, though he had not locked the car, the doorresisted his twisting grasp. Shaking, pounding, swearing, Millerwrestled with each of the doors.

  Abruptly he stiffened, as a horrible thought leaped into his being. Hisgaze left the car and wandered up the street. Past the intersection,past the one beyond that, on up the thoroughfare until the gray haze ofthe city dimmed everything. And as far as Dave Miller could see, therew
as no trace of motion.

  Cars were poised in the street, some passing other machines, someturning corners. A street car stood at a safety zone; a man who hadleaped from the bottom step hung in space a foot above the pavement.Pedestrians paused with one foot up. A bird hovered above a telephonepole, its wings glued to the blue vault of the sky.

  With a choked sound, Miller began to run. He did not slacken his pacefor fifteen minutes, until around him were the familiar, reassuringtrees and shrub-bordered houses of his own street. But yet how strangeto him!

  The season was autumn, and the air filled with brown and golden leavesthat tossed on a frozen wind. Miller ran by two boys lying on a lawn,petrified into a modern counterpart of the sculptor's "The Wrestlers."The sweetish tang of burning leaves brought a thrill of terror to him;for, looking down an alley from whence the smoke drifted, he saw a mantending a fire whose leaping flames were red tongues that did not move.

  Sobbing with relief, the young druggist darted up his own walk. He triedthe front door, found it locked, and jammed a thumb against thedoorbell. But of course the little metal button was as immovable as amountain. So in the end, after convincing himself that the key could notbe inserted into the lock, he sprang toward the back.

  The screen door was not latched, but it might as well have been thesteel door of a bank vault. Miller began to pound on it, shouting:

  "Helen! Helen, are you in there? My God, dear, there's something wrong!You've got to--"

  The silence that flowed in again when his voice choked off was the deadstillness of the tomb. He could hear his voice rustling through theempty rooms, and at last it came back to him like a taunt: "_Helen!Helen!_"