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                           SEVEN DAY TERROR

                           BY R. A. LAFFERTY

                Things just vanished. It was simple. As
                a matter of fact, it was child's play!

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
               Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1962.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


"Is there anything you want to make disappear?" Clarence Willoughby
asked his mother.

"A sink full of dishes is all I can think of. How will you do it?"

"I just built a disappearer. All you do is cut the other end out of a
beer can. Then you take two pieces of red cardboard with peepholes in
the middle and fit them in the ends. You look through the peepholes and
blink. Whatever you look at will disappear."

"Oh."

"But I don't know if I can make them come back. We'd better try it on
something else. Dishes cost money."

As always, Myra Willoughby had to admire the wisdom of her
nine-year-old son. She would not have had such foresight herself. He
always did.

"You can try it on Blanche Manners' cat outside there. Nobody will care
if it disappears except Blanche Manners."

"All right."

He put the disappearer to his eye and blinked. The cat disappeared from
the sidewalk outside.

His mother was interested. "I wonder how it works. Do you know how it
works?"

"Yes. You take a beer can with both ends cut out and put in two pieces
of cardboard. Then you blink."

"Never mind. Take it outside and play with it. You hadn't better make
anything disappear in here till I think about this."

But when he had gone his mother was oddly disturbed.

"I wonder if I have a precocious child. Why, there's lots of grown
people who wouldn't know how to make a disappearer that would work. I
wonder if Blanche Manners will miss her cat very much?"

Clarence went down to the Plugged Nickel, a pot house on the corner.

"Do you have anything you want to make disappear, Nokomis?"

"Only my paunch."

"If I make it disappear it'll leave a hole in you and you'll bleed to
death."

"That's right, I would. Why don't you try it on the fire plug outside?"

       *       *       *       *       *

This in a way was one of the happiest afternoons ever in the
neighborhood. The children came from blocks around to play in the
flooded streets and gutters, and if some of them drowned (and we don't
say that they _did_ drown) in the flood (and brother! it was a flood),
why, you have to expect things like that. The fire engines (whoever
heard of calling fire engines to put out a flood?) were apparatus-deep
in the water. The policemen and ambulance men wandered around wet and
bewildered.

"Resuscitator, resuscitator, anybody wanna resuscitator," chanted
Clarissa Willoughby.

"Oh, shut up," said the ambulance attendants.

Nokomis, the bar man in the Plugged Nickel, called Clarence aside.

"I don't believe, just for the moment, I'd tell anyone what happened to
that fire plug," he said.

"I won't tell if you won't tell," said Clarence.

Officer Comstock was suspicious. "There's only seven possible
explanations. One of the seven Willoughby kids did it. I dunno how.
It'd take a bulldozer to do it, and then there'd be something left of
the plug. But however they did it, one of them did it."

Officer Comstock had a talent for getting near the truth of dark
matters. This is why he was walking a beat out here in the boondocks
instead of sitting in a chair downtown.

"Clarissa!" said Officer Comstock in a voice like thunder.

"Resuscitator, resuscitator, anybody wanna resuscitator?" chanted
Clarissa.

"Do you know what happened to that fire plug?" asked officer C.

"I have an uncanny suspicion. As yet it is no more than that. When I am
better informed I will advise you."

Clarissa was eight years old and much given to uncanny suspicions.

"Clementine, Harold, Corinne, Jimmy, Cyril," he asked the five younger
Willoughby children. "Do you know what happened to that fire plug?"

"There was a man around yesterday. I bet he took it," said Clementine.

"I don't even remember a fire plug there. I think you're making a lot
of fuss about nothing," said Harold.

"City hall's going to hear about this," said Corinne.

"Pretty dommed sure," said Jimmy, "but I wont tell."

"Cyril!" cried Officer Comstock in a terrible voice. Not a terrifying
voice, a terrible voice. He felt terrible now.

"Great green bananas," said Cyril, "I'm only three years old. I don't
see how it's even my responsibility."

"Clarence," said Officer Comstock.

Clarence gulped.

"Do you know where that fire plug went?"

Clarence brightened. "No, sir. I don't know where it went."

A bunch of smart alecs from the water department came out and shut off
the water for a few blocks around and put some kind of cap on in place
of the fire plug. "This sure is going to be a funny-sounding report,"
said one of them.

Officer Comstock walked away discouraged. "Don't bother me, Miss
Manners," he said. "I don't know where to look for your cat. I don't
even know where to look for a fire plug."

"I have an idea," said Clarissa, "that when you find the cat you will
find the fire plug the same place. As yet it is only an idea."

Ozzie Murphy wore a little hat on top of his head. Clarence pointed
his weapon and winked. The hat was no longer there, but a little
trickle of blood was running down the pate.

"I don't believe I'd play with that any more," said Nokomis.

"Who's playing?" said Clarence. "This is for real."

       *       *       *       *       *

This was the beginning of the seven-day terror in the heretofore
obscure neighborhood. Trees disappeared from the parkings; lamp posts
were as though they had never been; Wally Waldorf drove home, got out,
slammed the door of his car, and there was no car. As George Mullendorf
came up the walk to his house his dog Pete ran to meet him and took
a flying leap to his arms. The dog left the sidewalk but something
happened; the dog was gone and only a bark lingered for a moment in the
puzzled air.

But the worst were the fire plugs. The second plug was installed the
morning after the disappearance of the first. In eight minutes it
was gone and the flood waters returned. Another one was in by twelve
o'clock. Within three minutes it had vanished. The next morning fire
plug number four was installed.

The water commissioner was there, the city engineer was there, the
chief of police was there with a riot squad, the president of the
parent-teachers association was there, the president of the University
was there, the mayor was there, three gentlemen of the F.B.I., a
newsreel photographer, eminent scientists and a crowd of honest
citizens.

"Let's see it disappear now," said the city engineer.

"Let's see it disappear now," said the police chief.

"Let's see it disa--it did, didn't it?" said one of the eminent
scientists.

And it was gone and everybody was very wet.

"At least I have the picture sequence of the year," said the
photographer. But his camera and apparatus disappeared from the midst
of them.

"Shut off the water and cap it," said the commissioner. "And don't put
in another plug yet. That was the last plug in the warehouse."

"This is too big for me," said the mayor. "I wonder that Tass doesn't
have it yet."

"Tass has it," said a little round man. "I am Tass."

"If all of you gentlemen will come into the Plugged Nickel," said
Nokomis, "and try one of our new Fire Hydrant Highballs you will all be
happier. These are made of good corn whisky, brown sugar and hydrant
water from this very gutter. You can be the first to drink them."

Business was phenomenal at the Plugged Nickel, for it was in front of
its very doors that the fire plugs disappeared in floods of gushing
water.

"I know a way we can get rich," said Clarissa several days later to her
father, Tom Willoughby. "Everybody says they're going to sell their
houses for nothing and move out of the neighborhood. Go get a lot of
money and buy them all. Then you can sell them again and get rich."

"I wouldn't buy them for a dollar each. Three of them have disappeared
already, and all the families but us have their furniture moved out
in their front yards. There might be nothing but vacant lots in the
morning."

"Good, then buy the vacant lots. And you can be ready when the houses
come back."

"Come back? Are the houses going to come back? Do you know anything
about this, young lady?"

"I have a suspicion verging on a certainty. As of now I can say no
more."

       *       *       *       *       *

Three eminent scientists were gathered in an untidy suite that looked
as though it belonged to a drunken sultan.

"This transcends the meta-physical. It impinges on the quantum
continuum. In some ways it obsoletes Boff," said Dr. Velikof Vonk.

"The contingence on the intransigence is the most mystifying aspect,"
said Arpad Arkabaranan.

"Yes," said Willy McGilly. "Who would have thought that you could do it
with a beer can and two pieces of cardboard? When I was a boy I used
an oatmeal box and red crayola."

"I do not always follow you," said Dr. Vonk. "I wish you would speak
plainer."

So far no human had been injured or disappeared--except for a little
blood on the pate of Ozzie Murphy, on the lobes of Conchita when her
gaudy earrings disappeared from her very ears, a clipped finger or so
when a house vanished as the front door knob was touched, a lost toe
when a neighborhood boy kicked at a can and the can was not; probably
not more than a pint of blood and three or four ounces of flesh all
together.

Now, however, Mr. Buckle the grocery man disappeared before witnesses.
This was serious.

Some mean-looking investigators from downtown came out to the
Willoughbys. The meanest-looking one was the mayor. In happier days he
had not been a mean man, but the terror had now reigned for seven days.

"There have been ugly rumors," said one of the mean investigators,
"that link certain events to this household. Do any of you know
anything about them?"

"I started most of them," said Clarissa. "But I didn't consider them
ugly. Cryptic, rather. But if you want to get to the bottom of this
just ask me a question."

"Did you make those things disappear?" asked the investigator.

"That isn't the question," said Clarissa.

"Do you know where they have gone?" asked the investigator.

"That isn't the question either," said Clarissa.

"Can you make them come back?"

"Why, of course I can. Anybody can. Can't you?"

"I cannot. If you can, please do so at once."

"I need some stuff. Get me a gold watch and a hammer. Then go down to
the drug store and get me this list of chemicals. And I need a yard of
black velvet and a pound of rock candy."

"Shall we?" asked one of the investigators.

"Yes," said the mayor, "it's our only hope. Get her anything she wants."

And it was all assembled.

       *       *       *       *       *

"Why does she get all the attention?" asked Clarence. "I was the one
that made all the things disappear. How does she know how to get them
back?"

"I knew it!" cried Clarissa with hate. "I knew he was the one that did
it. He read in my diary how to make a disappearer. If I was his mother
I'd whip him for reading his little sister's diary. That's what happens
when things like that fall into irresponsible hands."

She poised the hammer over the gold watch of the mayor on the floor.

"I have to wait a few seconds. This can't be hurried. It'll be only a
little while."

The second hand swept around to the point that was preordained for it
before the world began. Clarissa suddenly brought down the hammer with
all her force on the beautiful gold watch.

"That's all," she said. "Your troubles are over. See, there is Blanche
Manners' cat on the sidewalk just where she was seven days ago."

And the cat was back.

"Now let's go down to the Plugged Nickel and watch the fire plug come
back."

They had only a few minutes to wait. It came from nowhere and clanged
into the street like a sign and a witness.

"Now I predict," said Clarissa, "that every single object will return
exactly seven days from the time of its disappearance."

The seven-day terror had ended. The objects began to reappear.

"How," asked the mayor, "did you know they would come back in seven
days?"

"Because it was a seven-day disappearer that Clarence made. I also know
how to make a nine-day, a thirteen-day, a twenty-seven-day, and an
eleven-year disappearer. I was going to make a thirteen-day one, but
for that you have to color the ends with the blood from a little boy's
heart, and Cyril cried every time I tried to make a good cut."

"You really know how to make all of these?"

"Yes. But I shudder if the knowledge should ever come into unauthorized
hands."

"I shudder too, Clarissa. But tell me, why did you want the chemicals?"

"For my chemistry set."

"And the black velvet?"

"For doll dresses."

"And the pound of rock candy?"

"How did you ever get to be mayor of this town if you have to ask
questions like that? What do you think I wanted the rock candy for?"

"One last question," said the mayor. "Why did you smash my gold watch
with the hammer?"

"Oh," said Clarissa, "that was for dramatic effect."