New Folks' Home: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 6) Read Free Page B

And they must have been here not too long ago, because the lights were lit against the darkness of the storm.
    He sat quietly, now only faintly aware of the dull throb of pain that was pulsing in the ankle. The house was warm and quiet and restful and he was glad for it.
    Carefully he looked around, taking inventory.
    There was a table in the dining room and it was set for dinner, with the steaming silver coffee pot and the gleaming china tureen and a covered platter. He could smell the coffee and there was food as well, of that he felt quite sure. But there was only one place set, as if one person only had been meant to dine.
    A door opened into another room that seemed to be a study. There was a painting on the wall and a massive desk set beneath the painting. There were floor to ceiling bookcases, but there were no books in them.
    And a second door led into a bedroom. There was a bed turned down and a pair of pajamas were folded on the pillow. The lamp on the bedside table had been lit. As if the bed were waiting for someone to sleep in it, all turned down and ready.
    But there was a strangeness, a fantastic something about the house that he could not quite put his finger on. Like a case at law, he thought, where there was a certain quality that eluded one, always with the feeling that this certain quality might be the very key to the case itself.
    He sat and thought about it, and suddenly he knew.
    The house was furnished, but the house was waiting. One could sense a feeling of expectancy, as if this were a house that was waiting for a tenant. It was set and ready, it was equipped and furnished. But there was no one living here. It had an unlived-in smell to it and a vague sort of emptiness.
    But that was foolishness, he told himself. Of course, there was someone living in it. Someone had turned on the lights, someone had cooked a dinner and set a place for one, someone had lit the bedside lamp and turned down the covers of the bed.
    And yet, for all the evidence, he couldn’t quite believe it. The house still persisted in its empty feeling.
    He saw the trail of water he’d left in his crawl along the hall and across the carpeting to reach the chair. He saw the muddy handprints he’d left upon the wall where he had braced himself when he’d hobbled in.
    It was no way to mess up a place, he thought. He’d do his best to explain it to the owner.
    He sat and waited for the owner, nodding in the chair.
    Seventy, he thought, or almost seventy, and this his last adventure. All his family gone and all his friends as well—all except old Ben, who was dying slowly and ungracefully in the alien and ungraceful atmosphere of a small hospital room.
    He recalled that day of long ago when Ben and he had met, two young professors, Ben in astronomy and himself in law. They had been friends from the very first and it would be hard to have Ben go.
    But perhaps he would not notice it, he thought, as much as he might have at one time. For he, himself, in another month, would be settled down at Wood’s Rest. An old folks’ home, he thought. Although now they didn’t call them that. They called them fancy names like Wood’s Rest, thinking that might take the sting away.
    It didn’t matter, though. There was no one left to whom it might matter now—except himself, of course. And he didn’t care. Not very much, that is.
    He snapped himself erect and looked at the mantle clock.
    He’d dozed away, he thought, or been dreaming of the old days while no more than half awake. Almost an hour had passed since he’d last glanced at the clock and still the house was empty of anyone but he.
    The dinner still was upon the table, but it would be cold by now. Perhaps, he thought, the coffee still might be a little warm.
    He pushed forward in the chair and rose carefully to his feet. And the ankle screamed at him. He fell back into the chair and weak tears of pain ran out of his eyes and dribbled down his cheeks.
    Not the coffee, he thought. I