The Thing in B-3: A Tale of the Supernatural

A Yellow Dress

Ann-Helen’s was as quaintly casual as a village barn. Old-fashioned carnage lamps shed a soft glow. Coat and clothes cabinets were eaved with cedar shingles. A lacquered wagon wheel had been mounted on a short peeled log to do service as a display rack for belts. The chairs were converted barrels, beautifully varnished, bound in brass, and upholstered in leather.

The small, select shop expressed the air that it existed for the sheer pleasure of its owner. It was obviously a one-woman operation.

A bell tinkled softly when Bill entered, and a woman came forward to meet him. She was slender in a simple, unadorned black dress. About thirty-five, Bill guessed, with a gamine face, reddish hair, and a sprinkling of freckles across a snub nose. She wore little makeup. Her smile was airy, and Bill could have imagined her at a horse show as easily as here in this shop.

“May I help you?”

Bill introduced himself and described the dress. “Why, yes,” Ann-Helen said. She crossed to a cabinet. “Do you mean this one?”

She lifted out the dress and draped it across her other forearm.

The dress seemed to rush at Bill. The two small rhinestones at the collar were blinding points of fire.

“Yes,” he croaked the word out. “That’s the dress. Did you have many of them?”

Ann-Helen accepted his question with a friendly, amused laugh. “No, just the two.”

“You sold the other?”

“Yes. Now, if you know the young lady’s size...”

“Do you remember who bought the other dress?”

“Certainly. One of my regulars. A young college woman, Betty Atherton. She...”

Bill was backing to the door, fumbling behind him for the knob. “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

The proprietress watched him turn and dash out. Then she held the dress before her, shrugged, and slipped it back into the cabinet.

From the middle of the sidewalk, Bill threw glances along the street. Ann-Helen’s was in keeping with the tone of the block. Book and artists’ supply store. Interior decorator. Beauty salon. A dealer in antique vases and clocks.

And down on the corner, a drugstore. Bill broke into a run.

A bank of phone booths lined a wall inside the front door. Bill ducked into the nearest, slammed the folding door, and fumbled change from his pocket.

He dialed the Atherton residence. The cool voice of the butler responded.

“This is Bill Latham.”

“Yes, Mr. Latham?”

“Miss Atherton wasn’t feeling well yesterday afternoon. Did she leave for school at the usual time this morning?”

“No, Mr. Latham. She and her father left for the lake cottage an hour or so before dinner time yesterday.”

The booth was suddenly a sweatbox. Bill tugged his collar with his finger. “Have you heard from them since their departure?”

“Why, no, Mr. Latham. Is anything wrong?”

Bill sleeved his forehead. “Did you see Miss Atherton leave?”

“Of course, sir.”

“Did you...” Bill forced the words, distinctly, carefully separating each. “Did you notice what she was wearing when she left?”

“I’m sure she looked very nice, Mr. Latham. She always does.”

A vein thumped on the side of Bill’s neck. He fought back the urge to yell. “Was she wearing a yellow dress?”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

With a strangled moan, Bill crashed the phone onto its hook. He clung to it, dropping his face against his forearm. His mind refused to yield the phone number of the lake cottage. Then at last he remembered.

He straightened on the small round seat and steadied his breathing. He and Pat were to meet at eleven and add up their progress. But he could phone a message for Pat to sit tight. Meanwhile, assuming she’d reached the lake all right, Betty might even now be putting on that yellow dress to go for a drive.

Bill’s quivering fingers dropped the coin he tried to put in the slot. He bent and picked up the money. The phone box swallowed it with a faint ting.

He dialed and waited, his scalp shrinking a little each time the phone rang. Where was Betty? Mr. Atherton? At least the caretaker and his wife who lived in the servants’ quarters?

Then Betty answered. Bill couldn’t reply at once. The words formed but wouldn’t come out.

“Hello?” Betty repeated. “The Atherton cottage. Who’s calling?”

“Betty...”

“Yes? Who is this?”

“It’s me, Bill.”

“Hi, Bill. We don’t seem to have a very good connection.”

“Got a frog in my throat, I guess.” He cleared his throat. “How’s the headache?”

“It went away okay. Bill, I’m glad you called. I haven’t felt right about coming up here. Seems like I ran out on you.”

“Not a bit,” he said. “You forget that kind of stuff. Just do me a favor?”

“Sure, if I can.”

“Tell me what you’re wearing.”

“What?”

“Slacks? Dress?” He managed a laugh. “Burlap bag?”

She worried for a silent moment. “Bill, I don’t understand what you’re talking about. Are you sure you feel...”

“Please. Just trust me.”

“Well, okay. Right now I’m in jeans and an old sweatshirt.”

“Good. One more favor. I’m driving up there.”

“Right now, Bill?”

“As soon as I can crank the cayuse. And don’t change clothes. Do you understand? Not under any circumstances.”

He faintly heard the catch of her breath on a note of fright. “Bill, the way you’re talking...”

“I know,” he said. “But please do as I say. Just mark it off to my romantical impulses. I’ve got to see you. Just as you are. In dungarees and baggy cotton.”

The Atherton country place was a forty-minute drive northward. Bill had spent a couple of very pleasant Sunday afternoons up there at the close of the summer. He would lunch on hamburgers after church and drive up for lazy hours of swimming, fishing, boating with Betty, or just soaking up the sun on the strip of white beach Mr. Atherton had constructed with bulldozers and a mountain-load of sand.

Today, as the road climbed gradually toward the ragged skyline of low mountains, the scenery might have been a pleasant experience. The sky was clear, the sun bright, the air bracing. But the brilliant autumn changes of colors in the foliage were today like psychedelic hues, rising, falling, shifting, and closing on the car. Long miles separated him from Betty.

He swept through the village, a cluster of stores, filling station, souvenir stands, restaurant and roadhouse. Several of the places were already closed and boarded up against the teeth of approaching winter.

The road skirted the lake, which lay as still and hushed today as a miles-long millpond. Then Bill was climbing again. The view widened to breathtaking scope, a vista of lake, coves, shadowed valleys, all sheltered by peaceful mountains.

As the road hugged a fold in the mountain, Bill glimpsed the house, up ahead and to his left.

Cottage, he thought, wasn’t quite the word for it. The large and luxurious Swiss-style chalet might have been lifted bodily from the Alps. From the terraced lawns, a man could look upon the dizzying panorama of nature and feel dwarfed. The interior was a soothing sanctuary of hand-rubbed paneling, bearskin rugs, shaggy furniture with cushions of down, and vast fieldstone fireplaces where logs glowed and roman-candled tiny, crackling sparks during chilly evenings.

Bill’s old fastback labored up the driveway in a lower gear. He saw Betty come to the railed front gallery in response to the sound of the car. The hard knot in his stomach gave a little. She was in jeans and the tentlike comfort of an old green sweatshirt. The yellow dress was still on its hanger. But he still hadn’t won, not a total victory. He was grimly certain that she’d never be safe as long as the dress existed.

She came down the steps to meet him with her quick, lively movements.

Her smile was bright. But from the way her eyes searched him, he knew she was worried about the way he had sounded on the phone.

“Hi.” She linked her fingers with his as she fell in step beside him. With her other hand she stretched the tail of the sweatshirt in sloppy disarray. “Just as you ordered, sir.” She laughed. They were moving up the steps side by side. “But I didn’t know you thought the outfit so becoming.”

“You’ve never looked better,” he assured her.

They entered the cathedral-like silence of a living room with a beamed ceiling vaulted two stories overhead.

“Now, what’s this all about, Bill?”

“A dress.”

“Dress? I don’t understand.”

He wondered with a sudden misgiving if she could possibly understand it, even after he’d explained it.

He drew her to a large couch near the raised fireplace. She obeyed the pressure of his fingers and sat down. She was edgy. Her back was stiff, and her eyes reflected her concern for him.

He hadn’t seen her father’s car outside, but he wanted to be sure he could talk to her without any interruption.

“Did your father drive into town?”

She nodded. “One of those things came up at his office, like they always do. He got a phone call early this morning.” She tilted her head, looking up at him. “But you didn’t come here to talk to my father.”

He eased down sidewise on the couch. “Betty, sometimes we have to do things on faith, the way a blind man crosses a street.”

The confusion in her eyes glinted a little brighter. “Bill, I just don’t understand any of this. Are you sure that you... feel all right?”

“My own feelings don’t matter right now.” He scratched above his ear and tried to grin. “This is all coming even harder than I expected. I know how you feel about that business I went through in the morgue.”

For the first time, he sensed, she was actually beginning to fear him. She’d drawn back ever so slightly.

He made himself look at the suffering in her eyes, the struggle between the emotions she felt for him and the questions her mind was raising against him.

“Betty, for your own sake, during the next few minutes admit that the image in compartment B-three might have happened. I’m not asking you to believe it. Just don’t think of it as a tale told by a raving maniac.”

Sudden tears brimmed in her eyes. “Bill, I can’t stand to hear you carry on like this!”

Sharper than a knife, a wish cut through him, that he could put an arm around her and tell her the whole thing was a sad and sorry prank. But he had to get that dress. Whatever the cost to their feelings, he had to make sure she never put on the yellow dress.

“Betty, about the dress...”

“Bill, please!”

“You bought a dress at Ann-Helen’s,” he said doggedly. “It’s yellow. Linen. It has a squarish neck and two rhinestones where the straps join.”

“Bill, I don’t see...”

He wanted to shake her with rough, affectionate hands. “Aren’t you curious? Don’t you wonder how I know about the dress?”

“You’ve seen it, of course.”

“Where? When? Have you ever worn it?”

“No, but—” She broke off. She couldn’t dismiss his description of a dress he’d never seen. A subtle change came to the way she was looking at him. “Bill, just how did you know about the dress?”

“The young, dark-haired image with the battered face in B-three is wearing it,” he said.

He saw the flash of shock through her face.

“Betty,” he plunged on, “a strange mutant of a girl was the last to pass through B-three. She suffered a good part of her life, and maybe it gave her a kindness and compassion deeper than most of us ever attain.”

“You think you’ve received a warning through some sort of ESP force,” Betty said, a hollow note in her voice, “and nothing will convince you...”

“I don’t think I’m something special, Betty, ESP or clairvoyant,” Bill said. “I’ve never had any uncommon psychic powers — and I’ve a feeling that when this is over nothing else like it will ever happen to me again. But right now, in this one moment out of my lifetime, I know one thing. I know I can’t take the chance, Betty, and blindly rule out the possibility of what might happen to you if you wear that yellow dress.”

“You... you want me to destroy it?”

“Yes,” he said.

Her hand made a small movement toward him, then dropped in her lap. She pushed slowly to her feet. “All right, Bill. If it will make you feel better. Your feelings mean more to me than a shop full of dresses.”

He knew she was humoring him, trying to doctor a mental disturbance with the balm of pacification. The thought hurt, but he let it pass.

“Now,” he said. “I want the dress out of the way before your father or anyone else has a chance to talk you out of it.”

“If that’s what it takes to satisfy you.” Her words stifled. She turned away quickly, as if to deny herself a chance to think of what she was doing, and ran from the room.

She was back in a few moments, the dress crumpled in her hands. Without looking at Bill, she crossed to the fireplace. She threw the dress on the glowing embers. It began to smolder. She made one small movement with her hand as if she would snatch the dress out. Then it burst into flame. In an instant, it was a mass of hungry tongues of fire.

Standing close behind Betty, Bill watched the fire subside. The final little flame curled up, and the dress was a glowing ash.

“Thanks,” Bill murmured.

She didn’t turn, but stood looking at the ash that was turning from white-hot to gray. “I hope it helped you, Bill, that’s all.”

And I hope it helped you, he thought. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to realize it was all over. But what had he expected? A pronouncement from invisible trumpets?

“Well,” he said, “I guess I should get back to town.”

She turned then and said quietly, “I’ll walk with you to your car.”

They said little on the way out. He opened the car door but didn’t get in immediately.

“You’ve something else on your mind,” she said. “I think I know what it is.”

He looked from the car keys in his hands to her face.

“You’re wondering how much things have changed between us,” she said.

“Yes.” He nodded. “I was thinking about that.”

“Well, I don’t feel quite the same about you, Bill.” A slow smile softened her face. The mountain breeze brushed the purple-black hair at her temples. A deep calm had come to her eyes. “Maybe I’ve grown up a little. Yesterday, last week, I guess the relationship was the kind of thing our parents used to call puppy love. But today I know that when you really like a person, it means sharing. The lumps, as well as the fun.”

His feeling for her was a quiet warmth inside Bill. His mouth formed a crooked grin as he asked, “Lunch tomorrow, beautiful?”

“Lunch,” she said. “And you be on time!”

“Yes, ma’am.” Bill laughed as he got in the car.

He followed the circular driveway while she stood beside the house and watched. He thrust out his hand and waved a cheerful good-bye as a twist in the road slipped the house out of sight.

The drive back to the city was a breeze. The autumn colors had lost their psychedelic overtones. The mountains were beautiful. He drove with the car radio turned low, whistling accompaniment to the music.

Inside the city limits, he spotted an outdoor phone booth beside a filling station.

He turned in and drew to a stop when he was clear of the gas pumps. Still whistling, he walked to the phone booth and slid inside.

In five more minutes he was talking to Patrick Connell.

“Where in thunderation have you been?” Pat demanded. “I got a message that you wouldn’t meet me at eleven. I assumed you had located the seller of the dress. But that was hours ago.”

“It’s okay, Pat. Everything is fine.”

“Then you did run the dress down?”

“Sure. A little shop right near school sold it — to Betty Atherton.”

“What!”

“She was at their lake place. I had to drive up there. She’d never worn the dress, Pat — and she won’t. It lasted all of a minute in that nice, hungry fireplace.”

Pat was enfolded with a flabbergasted silence. He broke it with a shaky laugh. “You want to know something, Bill? Right up until this minute, I don’t think I really believed in B-three myself. But all this... the dress actually existing, purchased by someone close to you...”

“And safely destroyed,” Bill finished. He laughed suddenly. “Hey, I should get an A in parapsychology this semester!”

“You’ve done some unusual homework,” Pat admitted. “Are you coming by my office?”

“I guess not.” Bill looked out at the slanted rays of the sinking sun. “I’ve killed most of the day. I think I’ll clock in early and have a happy look at an empty morgue compartment.”

“You deserve it, at that.”

Bill hung up and came from the booth with a friendly smile for the station attendant and anybody else who crossed his path.

When Bill breezed into the morgue after a long skirmish with crosstown traffic, Mrs. Wennington was draping the cover over her typewriter. In her placid, comfortably plump personage she combined the multiple roles of receptionist, filing clerk, typist, and taker of Dr. Hornaday’s dictation. She looked over the rim of her glasses at Bill, then toward the wall clock.

“Hmmm. At first I wondered if I had actually worked that long after four-thirty.”

“Nope.” Bill grinned. “I’m just popping in bright and early so the taxpayers who foot the bill for my salary will get their money’s worth.”

Mrs. Wennington crossed to the closet and lifted out her coat. “An honest politician, no less.”

“Sure,” Bill said, taking her coat and holding it for her. “There are a few of us around.”

She buttoned her coat, tossed a scarf about her feathery salt-and-pepper hair, and tweaked his nose in parting.

The moment the front door closed behind her, Bill hurried along the hallway, slid open the door, and stepped down into the huge silence of the boneyard.

He walked directly to B-3, rubbed his palms in anticipation, and yanked the compartment open.

That’s when his knees buckled, and all the light seemed to dim.

She was still there.