Clifford D. Simak - A Death in the House

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Title : A Death in the House

Author : Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1959

Genre : science fiction

Comments : to my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this

book

Source : scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox

TextBridge Pro 9.0, proofread in MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text : January 3, 2000

Prepared by : Anada Sucka

======================================================================

A Death in the House

Clifford D. Simak

Old Mose Abrams was out hunting cows when he found the alien. He didn't

know it was an alien, but it was alive and it was in a lot of trouble and Old

Mose, despite everything the neighbors said about him, was not the kind of man

who could bear to leave a sick thing out there in the woods.

It was a horrid-looking thing, green and shiny, with some purple spots on

it, and it was repulsive even twenty feet away. And it stank.

It had crawled, or tried to crawl, into a clump of hazel brush, but hadn't

made it. The head part was in the brush and the rest lay out there naked in

the open. Every now and then the parts that seemed to be arms and hands clawed

feebly at the ground, trying to force itself deeper in the brush, but it was

too weak; it never moved an inch.

It was groaning, too, but not too loud - just the kind of keening sound a

lonesome wind might make around a wide, deep eave. But there was more in it

than just the sound of winter wind: there was a frightened, desperate note

that made the hair stand up on Old Mose's nape.

Old Mose stood there for quite a spell, making up his mind what he ought

to do about it, and a while longer after that working up his courage, although

most folks offhand would have said that he had plenty. But this was the sort

of situation that took more than just ordinary screwed-up courage. It took a

lot of foolhardiness.

But this was a wild, hurt thing and he couldn't leave it there, so he

walked up to it, and knelt down, and it was pretty hard to look at, though

there was a sort of fascination in its repulsiveness that was hard to figure

out - as if it were so horrible that it dragged one to it. And it stank in a

way that no one had ever smelled before.

Mose, however, was not finicky. In the neighborhood, he was not well known

for fastidity. Ever since his wife had died almost ten years before, he had

lived alone on his untidy farm and the housekeeping that he did was the

scandal of all the neighbor women. Once a year, if he got around to it, he

sort of shoveled out the house, but the rest of the year he just let things

accumulate.

So he wasn't as upset as some might have been with the way the creature

smelled. But the sight of it upset him, and it took him quite a while before

he could bring himself to touch it. and when he finally did, he was

considerably surprised. He had been prepared for it to be either cold or

slimy, or maybe even both. But it was neither. It was warm and hard and it had

a clean feel to it, and he was reminded of the way a green corn stalk would

feel.

He slid his hand beneath the hurt thing and pulled it gently from the

clump of hazel brush and turned it over so he could see its face. It hadn't

any face. It had an enlargement at the top of it, like a flower on top of a

stalk, although its body wasn't any stalk, and there was a fringe around this

enlargement that wiggled like a can of worms, and it was then that Mose almost

turned around and ran.

But he stuck it out.

He squatted there, staring at the no-face with the fringe of worms, and he

got cold all over and his stomach doubled up on him and he was stiff with

fright - and the fright got worse when it seemed to him that the keening of

the thing was coming from the worms.

Mose was a stubborn man. One had to be stubborn to run a runty farm like

this. Stubborn and insensitive in a lot of ways. But not insensitive, of

course, to a thing in pain.

Finally he was able to pick it up and hold it in his arms and there was

nothing to it, for it didn't weigh much. Less that a half-grown shoat, he

figured.

He went up the woods path with it, heading back for home, and it seemed to

him the smell of it was less. He was hardly scared at all and he was warm

again and not cold all over.

For the thing was quieter now and keening just a little. And although he

could not be sure of it, there were times when it seemed as if the thing were

snuggling up to him, the way a scared and hungry baby will snuggle to any

grown person that comes and picks it up.

Old Mose reached the buildings and he stood out in the yard a minute,

wondering whether he should take it to the barn or house. The barn, of course,

was the natural place for it, for it wasn't human - it wasn't even as close to

human as a dog or cat or sick lamb would be.

He didn't hesitate too long, however. He took it into the house and laid

it on what he called a bed, next to the kitchen stove. He got it straightened

out all neat and orderly and pulled a dirty blanket over it, and then went to

the stove and stirred up the fire until there was some flame.

Then he pulled up a chair beside the bed and had a good, hard, wondering

look at this thing he had brought home. It had quieted down a lot and seemed

more comfortable than it had out in the woods. He tucked the blanket snug

around it with a tenderness that surprised himself. He wondered what he had

that it might eat, and even if he knew, how he'd manage feeding it, for it

seemed to have no mouth.

'But you don't need to worry none,' he told it. 'Now that I got you under

a roof, you'll be all right. I don't know too much about it, but I'll take

care of you the best I can.'

By now it was getting on toward evening, and he looked out the window and

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