Bumper Crop Read Free Page B

started, but anything he might have said aged, died, and turned to dust in his mouth.
    Fully outlined in the moonlight, the young man started down the steps, holding the razor before him like a battle flag.
    Richards blinked. For a moment it looked as if the guy were wearing a . . . He was wearing a hat. A tall, black one with a shiny, metal band. And he was much larger now, and between his lips was a shimmer of wet, silver teeth like thirty-two polished stickpins.
    Plop, plop came the sound of his feet on the steps, and in the lower and deeper shadows of the stairs, it looked as if the young man had not only grown in size and found a hat, but had darkened his face and stomped his feet into pumpkins . . . But one of the pumpkins streamed long, dark hair.
    Plop, plop . . . Richards screamed and the sound of it rebounded against the basement walls like a Superball .
    Shattered starlight eyes beneath the hat. A Cheshire smile of argentine needles in a carbon face. A big dark hand holding the razor, whipping it back and forth like a lion's talon snatching at warm, soft prey.
    Swish, swish, swish .
    Richards's scream was dying in his throat, if not in the echoing basement, when the razor flashed for him. He avoided it by stepping briskly backward. His foot went underwater, but found a step there.
    Momentarily. The rotting wood gave way, twisted his ankle, sent him plunging into the cold, foul wetness.
    Just before his eyes, like portholes on a sinking ship, were covered by the liquid darkness, he saw the God of the Razor—now manifest in all his horrid form—lift a splitting head shoe and step into the water after him.
    Richards torqued his body; swam long, hard strokes, coasted bottom; his hand touched something cold and clammy down there and a piece of it came away in his fingers.
    Flipping it from him with a fan of his hand, he fought his way to the surface and broke water as the blonde girl's head bobbed in front of him, two rat passengers aboard, gnawing viciously at the eye sockets.
    Suddenly, the girl's head rose, perched on the crown of the tall hat of the God of the Razor, then it tumbled off, rats and all, into the greasy water.
    Now there was the jet face of the God of the Razor and his mouth was open and the teeth blinked briefly before the lips drew tight, and the other hand, like an eggplant sprouting fingers, clutched Richards's coat collar and plucked him forward and Richards—the charnel breath of the God in his face, the sight of the lips slashing wide to once again reveal brilliant dental grill work—went limp as a pelt. And the God raised the razor to strike.
    And the moon tumbled behind a thick, dark cloud.
    White face, shaggy hair, no hat, a fading glint of silver teeth . . . the young man holding the razor, clutching Richards's coat collar.
    The juice back in his heart, Richards knocked the man's hand free, and the guy went under. Came up thrashing. Went under again. And when he rose this time, the razor was frantically flaying the air.
    "Can't swim," he bellowed, "can't—" Under he went, and this time he did not come up. But Richards felt something touch his foot from below. He kicked out savagely, dog paddling wildly all the while. Then the touch was gone and the sloshing water went immediately calm.
    Richards swam toward the broken stairway, tried to ignore the blond head that lurched by, now manned by a four-rat crew. He got hold of the loose, dangling stair rail and began to pull himself up.
    The old board screeched on its loosening nail, but held until Richards gained a hand on the door ledge, then it gave way with a groan and went to join the rest of the rotting lumber, the heads, the bodies, the faded stigmata of the God of the Razor.
    Pulling himself up, Richards crawled into the room on his hands and knees, rolled over on his back . . . and something flashed between his legs . . . It was the razor. It was stuck to the bottom of his shoe . . . That had been the touch he had felt