The Moving Finger.pdf

The Moving Finger

by Stephen King

Stephen King - The Moving Finger

When the scratching started, Howard Mitla was sitting alone in the Queens apartment

where he lived with his wife. Howard was one of New York's lesser-known certified

public accountants. Violet Mitla, one of New York's lesser-known dental assistants,

had waited until the news was over before going down to the store on the corner to

get a pint of ice cream. Jeopardy was on after the news, and she didn't care for

that show. She said it was because Alex Trebek looked like a crooked evangelist, but

Howard knew the truth: Jeopardy made her feel dumb.

The scratching sound was coming from the bathroom just off the short squib of hall

that led to the bedroom. Howard tightened up as soon as he heard it. It wasn't a

junkie or a burglar in there, not with the heavy-gauge mesh he had put over all the

windows two years ago at his own expense. It sounded more like a mouse in the basin

or the tub. Maybe even a rat.

He waited through the first few questions, hoping the scratching sound would go away

on its own, but it didn't. When the commercial came on, he got reluctantly up from

his chair and walked to the bathroom door. It was standing ajar, allowing him to

hear the scratching sound even better.

Almost certainly a mouse or a rat. Little paws clicking against the porcelain.

"Damn," Howard said, and went into the kitchen.

Standing in the little space between the gas stove and the refrigerator were a few

cleaning implements -- a mop, a bucket filled with old rags, a broom with a dustpan

snugged down over the handle. Howard took the broom in one hand, holding it well

down toward the bristles, and the dustpan in the other. Thus armed, he walked

reluctantly back through the small living room to the bathroom door. He cocked his

head forward. Listened.

Scratch, scratch, scritchy-scratch.

A very small sound. Probably not a rat. Yet that was what his mind insisted on

conjuring up. Not just a rat but a New York rat, an ugly, bushy thing with tiny

black eyes and long whiskers like wire and snaggle teeth protruding from below its

V-shaped upper lip. A rat with attitude.

The sound was tiny, almost delicate, but nevertheless --

Behind him, Alex Trebek said, "This Russian madman was shot, stabbed, and

strangled... all in the same night."

"Who was Lenin?'' one of the contestants responded.

"Who was Rasputin, peabrain," Howard Mitla murmured. He transferred the dustpan to

the hand holding the broom, then snaked his free hand into the bathroom and turned

on the light. He stepped in and moved quickly to the tub crammed into the corner

below the dirty, mesh-covered window. He hated rats and mice, hated all little furry

things that squeaked and scuttered (and sometimes bit), but he had discovered as a

boy growing up in Hell's Kitchen that if you had to dispatch one of them, it was

best to do it quickly. It would do him no good to sit in his chair and ignore the

sound; Vi had helped herself to a couple of beers during the news, and the bathroom

would be her first stop when she returned from the market. If there was a mouse in

the tub, she would raise the roof... and demand he do his manly duty and dispatch it

anyway. Posthaste.

The tub was empty save for the hand-held shower attachment. Its hose lay on the

enamel like a dead snake.

The scratching had stopped either when Howard turned on the light or when he entered

the room, but now it started again. Behind him. He turned and took three steps

toward the bathroom basin, raising the broomhandle as he moved.

The fist wrapped around the handle got to the level of his chin and then froze. He

stopped moving. His jaw came unhinged. If he had looked at himself in the

toothpaste-spotted mirror over the basin, he would have seen shiny strings of

spittle, as gossamer as strands of spiderweb, gleaming between his tongue and the

roof of his mouth.

A finger had poked its way out of the drain-hole in the basin.

A human finger.

For a moment it froze, as if aware it had been discovered. Then it began to move

again, feeling its wormlike way around the pink porcelain. It reached the white

rubber plug, felt its way over it, then descended to the porcelain again. The

scratching noise hadn't been made by the tiny claws of a mouse after all. It was the

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Stephen King - The Moving Finger

nail on the end of that finger, tapping the porcelain as it circled and circled.

Howard gave voice to a rusty, bewildered scream, dropped the broom, and ran for the

bathroom door. He hit the tile wall with his shoulder instead, rebounded, and tried

again. This time he got out, swept the door shut behind him, and only stood there

with his back pressed against it, breathing hard. His heartbeat was hard, toneless

Morse code high up in one side of his throat.

He couldn't have stood there for long -- when he regained control of his thoughts,

Alex Trebek was still guiding that evening's three contestants through Single

Jeopardy -- but while he did, he had no sense of time passing, where he was, or even

who he was.

What brought him out of it was the electronic whizzing sound that signaled a Daily

Double square. "The category is Space and Aviation," Alex was saying. "You currently

have seven hundred dollars, Mildred -- how much do you wish to wager?" Mildred, who

did not have game-show-host projection, muttered something inaudible in response.

Howard moved away from the door and back into the living room on legs, which felt

like pogo-sticks. He still had the dustpan in one hand. He looked at it for a moment

and then let it fall to the carpet. It hit with a dusty little thump.

"I didn't see that," Howard Mitla said in a trembling little voice, and collapsed

into his chair.

"All right, Mildred -- for five hundred dollars: This Air Force test site was

originally known as Miroc Proving Ground."

Howard peered at the TV. Mildred, a mousy little woman with a hearing aid as big as

a clock-radio screwed into one ear, was thinking deeply.

"I didn't see that," he said with a little more conviction.

"What is... Vandenberg Air Base?" Mildred asked.

"What is Edwards Air Base, birdbrain," Howard said. And, as Alex Trebek confirmed

what Howard Mitla already knew, Howard repeated: "I didn't see that at all."

But Violet would be back soon, and he had left the broom in the bathroom.

Alex Trebek told the contestants -- and the viewing audience -- that it was still

anybody's game, and they would be back to play Double Jeopardy, where the scores

could really change, in two shakes of a lamb's tail. A politician came on and began

explaining why he should be re-elected. Howard got reluctantly to his feet. His legs

felt a little more like legs and a little less like pogo-sticks with metal fatigue

now, but he still didn't want to go back into the bathroom.

Look, he told himself, this is perfectly simple. Things like this always are. You

had a momentary hallucination, the son of thing that probably happens to people all

the time. The only reason you don't hear about them more often is because people

don't like to talk about them... having hallucinations is embarrassing. Talking

about them makes people feel the way you 're going to feel if that broom is still on

the floor in there when Vi comes back and asks what you were up to.

"Look," the politician on TV was saying in rich, confidential tones. "When you get

right down to cases, it's perfectly simple: do you want an honest, competent man

running the Nassau County Bureau of Records, or do you want a man from upstate, a

hired gun who's never even -- "

"It was air in the pipes, I bet," Howard said, and although the sound which had

taken him into the bathroom in the first place had not sounded the slightest bit

like air in the pipes, just hearing his own voice -- reasonable, under control again

-- got him moving with a little more authority.

And besides -- Vi would be home soon. Any minute, really.

He stood outside the door, listening.

Scratch, scratch, scratch. It sounded like the world's smallest blind man tapping

his cane on the porcelain in there, feeling his way around, checking out the old

surroundings.

"Air in the pipes!" Howard said in a strong, declamatory voice, and boldly threw the

bathroom door open. He bent low, grabbed the broomhandle, and snatched it back out

the door. He did not have to take more than two steps into the little room with its

faded, lumpy linoleum and its dingy, mesh-crisscrossed view on the airshaft, and he

most certainly did not look into the bathroom sink.

He stood outside, listening.

Scratch, scratch. Scritch-scratch.

He returned the broom and dustpan to the little nook in the kitchen between the

stove and the refrigerator and then returned to the living room. He stood there for

a moment, looking at the bathroom door. It stood ajar, spilling a fan of yellow

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Stephen King - The Moving Finger

light into the little squib of hall.

You better go turn off the light. You know how VI raises the roof about stuff like

that. You don't even have to go in. Just reach through the door and flick it off.

But what if something touched his hand while he was reaching for the light switch?

What if another finger touched his finger?

How about that, fellows and girls?

He could still hear that sound. There was something terribly relentless about it. It

was maddening.

Scratch. Scritch. Scratch.

On the TV, Alex Trebek was reading the Double Jeopardy categories. Howard went over

and turned up the sound a little. Then be sat down in his chair again and told

himself he didn't hear anything from the bathroom, not a single thing.

Except maybe a little air in the pipes.

Vi Mitla was one of those women who move with such dainty precision that they seem

almost fragile... but Howard had been married to her for twenty-one years, and he

knew there was nothing fragile about her at all. She ate, drank, worked, danced, and

made love in exactly the same way: con brio. She came into the apartment like a

pocket hurricane. One large arm curled a brown paper sack against the right side of

her bosom. She carried it through into the kitchen without pausing. Howard heard the

bag crackle, heard the refrigerator door open and then close again. When she came

back, she tossed Howard her coat. "Hang this up for me, will you?" she asked. "I've

got to pee. Do I ever! Whew!"

Whew! was one of Vi's favorite exclamations. Her version rhymed with P.U., the

child's exclamation for something smelly.

"Sure, Vi," Howard said, and rose slowly to his feet with Vi's dark-blue coat in his

arms. His eyes never left her as she went down the hall and through the bathroom

door.

"Con Ed loves it when you leave the lights on, Howie," she called back over her

shoulder.

"I did it on purpose," he said. "I knew that'd be your first stop."

She laughed. He heard the rustle of her clothes. "You know me too well -- people

will say we're in love."

You ought to tell her -- warn her, Howard thought, and knew he could do nothing of

the kind. What was he supposed to say? Watch out, Vi, there's a finger coming out of

the basin drainhole, don't let the guy it belongs to poke you in the eye if you bend

over to get a glass of water?

Besides, it had just been a hallucination, one brought on by a little air in the

pipes and his fear of rats and mice. Now that some minutes had gone by, this seemed

almost plausible to him.

Just the same, he only stood there with Vi's coat in his arms, waiting to see if she

would scream. And, after ten or fifteen endless seconds, she did.

"My God, Howard!"

Howard jumped, hugging the coat more tightly to his chest. His heart, which had

begun to slow down, began to do its Morse-code number again. He struggled to speak,

but at first his throat was locked shut.

"What?" he managed finally. "What, Vi? What is it?"

"The towels! Half of em are on the floor! Sheesh! What happened?' '

"I don't know," he called back. His heart was thumping harder than ever, and it was

impossible to tell if the sickish, pukey feeling deep down in his belly was relief

or terror. He supposed he must have knocked the towels off the shelf during his

first attempt to exit the bathroom, when he had hit the wall.

"It must be spookies," she said. "Also, I don't mean to nag, but you forgot to put

the ring down again."

"Oh -- sorry," he said.

"Yeah, that's what you always say," her voice floated back. "Sometimes I think you

want me to fall in and drown. I really do!" There was a clunk as she put it down

herself. Howard waited, heart thumping away, her coat still hugged against his

chest.

"He holds the record for the most strikeouts in a single game," Alex Trebek read.

"Who was Tom Seaver?'' Mildred snapped right back.

"Roger Clemens, you nitwit," Howard said.

Pwooosh! There went the flush. And the moment he was waiting for (Howard had just

realized this consciously) was now at hand. The pause seemed almost endless. Then he

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Stephen King - The Moving Finger

heard the squeak of the washer in the bathroom faucet marked H (he kept meaning to

replace that washer and kept forgetting), followed by water flowing into the basin,

followed by the sound of Vi briskly washing her hands.

No screams.

Of course not, because there was no finger.

"Air in the pipes," Howard said with more assurance, and went to hang up his wife's

coat.

She came out, adjusting her skirt. "I got the ice cream," she said, "cherry-vanilla,

just like you wanted. But before we try it, why don't you have a beer with me,

Howie? It's this new stuff. American Grain, it's called. I never heard of it, but it

was on sale so I bought a six-pack. Nothing ventured, nothing grained, am I right?"

"Hardy-har," he said, wrinkling his nose. Vi's penchant for puns had struck him as

cute when he first met her, but it had staled somewhat over the years. Still, now

that he was over his fright, a beer sounded like just the thing. Then, as Vi went

out into the kitchen to get him a glass of her new find, he realized he wasn't over

his fright at all. He supposed that having a hallucination was better than seeing a

real finger poking out of the drain of the bathroom basin, a finger that was alive

and moving around, but it wasn't exactly an evening-maker, either.

Howard sat down in his chair again. As Alex Trebek announced the Final Jeopardy

category -- it was The Sixties -- he found himself thinking of various TV shows he'd

seen where it turned out that a character who was having hallucinations either had

(a) epilepsy or (b) a brain tumor. He found he could remember a lot of them.

"You know," Vi said, coming back into the room with two glasses of beer, "I don't

like the Vietnamese people who run that market. I don't think I'll ever like them. I

think they're sneaky."

"Have you ever caught them doing anything sneaky?'' Howard asked. He himself thought

the Lahs were exceptional people... but tonight he didn't care much one way or the

other.

"No," Vi said, "not a thing. And that makes me all the more suspicious. Also, they

smile all the time. My father used to say,

'Never trust a smiling man.' He also said... Howard, are you feeling all right?"

"He said that?" Howard asked, making a rather feeble attempt at levity.

"Tres amusant, cheri. You look as pale as milk. Are you coming down with something?"

No, he thought of saying, I'm not coming down with something -- that's too mild a

term for it. I think I might have epilepsy or maybe a brain tumor, Vi -- how's that

for coming down with something?

"It's just work, I guess," he said. "I told you about the new tax account. St.

Anne's Hospital."

"What about it?"

"It's a rat's nest," he said, and that immediately made him think of the bathroom

again -- the sink and the drain. "Nuns shouldn't be allowed to do bookkeeping.

Someone ought to have put it in the Bible just to make sure."

"You let Mr. Lathrop push you around too much," Vi told him firmly. "It's going to

go on and on unless you stand up for yourself. Do you want a heart attack?"

"No." And I don't want epilepsy or a brain tumor, either. Please, God, make it a

one-time thing. Okay? Just some weird mental burp that happens once and never again.

Okay? Please? Pretty please? With some sugar on it?

"You bet you don't," she said grimly. "Arlene Katz was saying just the other day

that when men under fifty have heart attacks, they almost never come out of the

hospital again. And you're only forty-one. You have to stand up for yourself,

Howard. Stop being such a pushover."

"I guess so," he said glumly.

Alex Trebek came back on and gave the Final Jeopardy answer: "This group of hippies

crossed the United States in a bus with writer Ken Kesey.'' The Final Jeopardy music

began to play. The two men contestants were writing busily. Mildred, the woman with

the microwave oven in her ear, looked lost. At last she began to scratch something.

She did it with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

Vi took a deep swallow from her glass. "Hey!" she said. "Not bad! And only

two-sixty-seven a six-pack!"

Howard drank some himself. It was nothing special, but it was wet, at least, and

cool. Soothing.

Neither of the male contestants was even close. Mildred was also wrong, but she, at

least, was in the ball-park. "Who were the Merry Men?" she had written.

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Stephen King - The Moving Finger

"Merry Pranksters, you dope," Howard said.

Vi looked at him admiringly. "You know all the answers, Howard, don't you?"

"I only wish I did," Howard said, and sighed.

Howard didn't care much for beer, but that night he helped himself to three cans of

Vi's new find nevertheless. Vi commented on it, said that if she had known he was

going to like it that much, she would have stopped by the drugstore and gotten him

an IV hookup. Another time-honored Vi-ism. He forced a smile. He was actually hoping

the beer would send him off to sleep quickly. He was afraid that, without a little

help, he might be awake for quite awhile, thinking about what he had imagined he'd

seen in the bathroom sink. But, as Vi had often informed him, beer was full of

vitamin P, and around eight-thirty, after she had retired to the bedroom to put on

her nightgown, Howard went reluctantly into the bathroom to relieve himself.

First he walked over to the bathroom sink and forced himself to look in.

Nothing.

This was a relief (in the end, a hallucination was still better than an actual

finger, he had discovered, despite the possibility of a brain tumor), but he still

didn't like looking down the drain. The brass cross-hatch inside that was supposed

to catch things like clots of hair or dropped bobby-pins had disappeared years ago,

and so there was only a dark hole rimmed by a circle of tarnished steel. It looked

like a staring eyesocket.

Howard took the rubber plug and stuck it into the drain.

That was better.

He stepped away from the sink, put up the toilet ring (Vi complained bitterly if he

forgot to put it down when he was through, but never seemed to feel any pressing

need to put it back up when she was), and addressed the John. He was one of those

men who only began to urinate immediately when the need was extreme (and who could

not urinate at all in crowded public lavatories -- the thought of all those men

standing in line behind him just shut down his circuits), and he did now what he

almost always did in the few seconds between the aiming of the instrument and the

commencement of target practice: he recited prime numbers in his mind.

He had reached thirteen and was on the verge of flowing when there was a sudden

sharp sound from behind him: pwuck! His bladder, recognizing the sound of the rubber

plug being forced sharply out of the drain even before his brain did, clamped shut

immediately (and rather painfully).

A moment later that sound -- the sound of the nail clipping lightly against the

porcelain as the questing finger twisted and turned -- began again. Howard's skin

went cold and seemed to shrink until it was too small to cover the flesh beneath. A

single drop of urine spilled from him and plinked in the bowl before his penis

actually seemed to shrink in his hand, retreating like a turtle seeking the safety

of its shell.

Howard walked slowly and not quite steadily over to the washbasin. He looked in.

The finger was back. It was a very long finger, but seemed otherwise normal. Howard

could see the nail, which was neither bitten nor abnormally long, and the first two

knuckles. As he watched, it continued to tap and feel its way around the basin.

Howard bent down and looked under the sink. The pipe, which came out of the floor,

was no more than three inches in diameter. It was not big enough for an arm.

Besides, it made a severe bend at the place where the sink trap was. So just what

was that finger attached to? What could it be attached to?

Howard straightened up again, and for one alarming moment he felt that his head

might simply detach itself from his neck and float away. Small black specks flocked

across his field of vision.

I'm going to faint! he thought. He grabbed his right earlobe and yanked it once,

hard, the way a frightened passenger who has seen trouble up the line might yank the

Emergency Stop cord of a railroad car. The dizziness passed... but the finger was

still there.

It was not a hallucination. How could it be? He could see a tiny bead of water on

the nail, and a tiny thread of whiteness beneath it -- soap, almost surely soap. Vi

had washed her hands after using the John.

It could be a hallucination, though. It still could be. Just because you see soap

and water on it, does that mean you can't be imagining it? And listen, Howard -- if

you're not imagining it, what's it doing in there? How did it get there in the first

place? And how come Vi didn't see it?

Call her, then -- call her in! his mind instructed, and in the next microsecond

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