The Best of Robert Bloch by Robert Bloch Page A

some soup for lunch. He wanted to ask her about the cat, but he didn't dare. Besides, he couldn't hear it scratching. Must have run away when Ma came home.
    Ronnie lay in bed and dozed as the afternoon shadows ran in long black ribbons across the bedroom floor. He smiled to himself. What a sucker he was! Afraid of a cat. Maybe there wasn't even a cat—all in his mind.
    "Ronnie—you all right?" Ma called up from the foot of the stairs.
    "Yes, Ma. I feel lots better."
    Sure, he felt better. He could get up now and eat supper if he wanted. In just a minute he'd put his clothes on and go downstairs. He started to push the sheets off. It was dark in the room, now. Just about supper time—
    Then Ronnie heard it. A scratching. A scurrying. From the hall? No. It couldn't be in the hall. Then where?
    The window. It was open. And the scratching came from the ledge outside. He had to close it, fast. Ronnie jumped out of bed, barking his shin against a chair as he groped through the dusk. Then he was at the window, slamming it down, tight.
    He heard the scratching.
    And it came from inside the room!
    Ronnie hurled himself upon the bed, clawing the covers up to his chin. His eyes bulged against the darkness.
    Where was it?
    He saw nothing but shadows. Which shadow moved?
    Where was it?
    Why didn't it yowl so he could locate it? Why didn't it make a noise? Yes, and why was it here? Why did it follow him? What was it trying to do to him?
    Ronnie didn't know. All he knew was that he lay in bed, waiting, thinking of Mrs. Mingle and her cat and how she was a witch and died because he'd killed her. Or had he killed her? He was all mixed up, he couldn't remember, he didn't even know what was real and what wasn't real anymore. He couldn't tell which shadow would move next.
    And then he could.
    The round shadow was moving. The round black ball was inching across the floor from beneath the window. It was the cat, all right, because shadows don't have claws that scrape. Shadows don't leap through the air and perch on the bedpost, grinning at you with yellow eyes and yellow teeth—grinning the way Mrs. Mingle grinned.
    The cat was big. Its eyes were big. Its teeth were big, too.
    Ronnie opened his mouth to scream.
    Then the shadow was sailing through the air, springing at his face, at his open mouth. The claws fastened in his cheeks, forcing his jaws apart, and the head dipped down—
    Far away, under the pain, someone was calling.
    "Ronnie! Oh, Ronnie! What's the matter with you?"
    Everything was fire and he lashed out and suddenly the shadow went away and he was sitting bolt upright in bed. His mouth worked but no sound came out. Nothing came out except that gushing red wetness,
    "Ronnie! Why don't you answer me?"
    A guttural sound came from deep within Ronnie's throat, but no words. There would never be any words.
    "Ronnie—what's the matter? Has the cat got your tongue—?"

The Hungry House
     
     
     
    A T FIRST THERE were two of them—he and she, together. That's the way it was when they bought the house.
    Then it came. Perhaps it was there all the time, waiting for them in the house. At any rate, it was there now. And nothing could be done.
    Moving was out of the question. They'd taken a five-year lease, secretly congratulating themselves on the low rental. It would be absurd to complain to the agent, impossible to explain to their friends. For that matter, they had nowhere else to go; they had searched for months to find a home.
    Besides, at first neither he nor she cared to admit awareness of its presence. But both of them knew it was there.
    She felt it the very first evening, in the bedroom. She was sitting in front of the high, old-fashioned mirror, combing her hair. The mirror hadn't been dusted yet and it seemed cloudy; the light above it flickered a bit, too.
    So at first she thought it was just a trick of shadows or some flaw in the glass. The wavering outline behind her seemed to blur the reflection oddly, and she frowned. Then