Manhunt. Volume 5, Number 5, May 1957

Razor, Razor, Gleaming Bright by Roy Carroll

She threw despairing looks over her shoulder, and each time he was a little closer with the weapon raised high and eager.

Waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Carson, Gretta fell asleep on the living room couch. Hers was a shallow, troubled slumber, shot through with a dream.

She was in a long, narrow corridor of darkness, a faint light shimmering at the far end. She couldn’t see the walls, but each time she tried to escape, she ran into them.

The corridor tipped and tilted in such a way as to make her dizzy. And down it rang his laughter, echoing as in a great, empty chamber.

She threw despairing looks over her shoulder, and each time he was a little closer with the weapon raised high and eager.

It was a razor, and it threw out a phosphorescent glow. It loomed over her, larger and larger. His face was somewhere in the background. A pale blob. She couldn’t see him clearly, only the razor. His laughter rose higher and higher until it filled the whole corridor.

She renewed her efforts to get away. Her heart beat wildly. A faint hope was born in her. She was gaining on him now. Leaving him behind.

Then the corridor tipped up at an angle too steep for her to hold her footing. She fell to her knees. Her toes dug to get her feet beneath her once again. Her hands clawed the hard, slick floor of the corridor until the nails tore loose.

With a gasp of despair, she knew her efforts were useless. She began sliding down the corridor. It was like a slick chute.

She slid faster and faster. Straight toward the man with the razor. It became a giant razor. It came slashing down...

She screamed as a hand shook her. She snapped awake with a nervous jerk of her whole body that almost threw her off the couch.

She pulled back, rigid, staring at the face before her.

Mrs. Carson said, “My dear, whatever is the matter? You were carrying on dreadfully in your sleep.”

“Was I?” Gretta felt the fine beads of sweat on her face. Her heart was still hammering and her breath was short. The razor had seemed so certain to claim her that it was hard for a moment to realize that she was here in the Carson’s apartment with Mrs. Carson’s plump middle-aged face before her filled with concern.

Mr. Carson stood beside his wife, still in his topcoat and hat. Where the years had pleasantly softened his wife, they had had the opposite effect on him. He somehow reminded Gretta of a hard, coiled spring. All his movements were brisk. His face was narrow with each bone sharp and clear beneath the stretched mask of skin.

“Are you ill, Gretta?” he inquired. His tone indicated that he had no real feeling about the matter. He never used any other tone.

“No, sir,” Gretta said.

Mrs. Carson did not dismiss her concern easily. She was a sweet, vague woman. Stupid, Gretta had decided upon first meeting her. But rather kind.

“Perhaps you’ve eaten something that upset you and gave you a nightmare, dear,” Mrs. Carson said.

“No, not at all,” Gretta said. Her voice was cool. She was rapidly gaining possession of herself. She was both ashamed and angry that they should have seen her show of weakness. She stood up, a short, rather heavy set girl. She wore her usual severe, tailored suit. Her face was without makeup, her brows thicker than most girls because she didn’t pluck them.

As she turned to get her coat from the living room cloak closet, Gretta felt Mrs. Carson’s gaze following her. Gretta could almost read the thoughts behind the puffy features. If Gretta had eaten something here to make her sick, maybe Gretta wouldn’t come again. And that would be a calamity in Mrs. Carson’s selfish little world. For Gretta wasn’t like most girls of her age, flighty, their minds filled with thoughts of boys, boys, boys. Mrs. Carson wouldn’t trust her two precious children with just any sitter. Mr. and Mrs. Carson hadn’t married until late in life. Mrs. Carson had given birth to two children, a boy and girl, before natural changes common to her years had precluded further results. As a consequence, Gretta thought she doted over the children with an affection that was stupid, vain, and a little sickening.

“Here,” Mr. Carson said suddenly. “I’ll bet this is what brought on the nocturnal horrors.”

Gretta turned. Mr. Carson had picked up the newspaper from the couch. Gretta had been reading it, pondering over what she had read, just before she had fallen asleep.

The paper rattled in Mr. Carson’s hand. “Razor killer claims a third victim,” he read. “The body of an elderly man, his throat slashed with a razor...”

Mrs. Carson clapped her hands over her ears. “Oh, please dear, I can’t bear to hear such horrid stuff.”

Mr. Carson looked at his wife with contempt. Then he turned his gaze toward Gretta. “You were reading this when you dozed off?”

Gretta nodded.

“Ah,” said Mr. Carson, “you see. That did it. I’ll bet your mind pictured all sorts of things. The rustle of the wind outside became his footsteps creeping up the fire escape. A touch of moonlight at the window was his face.”

“Please, please,” Mrs. Carson said. “I’d die at the thought of him ever coming here. Oh, my precious darlings...”

She rushed across the room, down a short hallway, and there came to the living room the sound of her opening a door. She returned in a moment, fanning her face with a limp hand. “They’re sleeping like angels, the dears. Please, let’s have a cup of tea. I do need something to brace me. Why don’t they catch that horrid man and take his razor away from him?”

“I guess they’re trying,” Mr. Carson said.

“Oh, I suppose so,” his wife said. “But why don’t they do something? He’s operating in this end of town. We have no idea when he might — oh, dear, I think we really should hire someone to protect the children.”

“You mean a bodyguard?” Mr. Carson asked.

“Don’t you think it would be a good idea, dear?”

Mr. Carson laughed in sour humor. “The man we hired might be the very one. He could be any Tom, Dick, or Harry. Outwardly, by day, a respectable business man even. You never know. He could be living in this very building.”

Gretta slipped quickly into her coat, pulling her eyes from Mr. Carson’s face. Mrs. Carson let a short, quick breath out of her red, puffy lips. “It’s dreadful. I won’t sleep a wink— Oh, Gretta, must you go now?”

“Yes, ma’m.”

“Oh, dear, that long walk you have...”

“It’s only six or eight blocks.”

“But alone... So late...”

“I’ll be all right.”

“Let Mr. Carson take you.”

“Sure,” Mr. Carson said. “I’ll drive you over, Gretta.”

He looked at her, and she was aware of her youth and his age. How old and repulsive he became suddenly, looking at her in that way!

“No,” she said, “you don’t have to bother.”

“It’s no bother.”

“I said no!” Gretta said.

“Well,” Mrs. Carson said. “We were only thinking of you, dear, trying to be nice.”

“But I think you need him here more.”

“I am upset,” Mrs. Carson admitted.

“You see? Well, good night.”

Gretta left the apartment, closed the door quickly behind her. She hesitated in the hallway a moment. Memory of the dream she’d had on the couch tried to come creeping back into her mind. She shook her head and walked quickly down the hallway.

It was late and the sidewalks were dark, deserted, and in this residential section there were few automobiles moving on the street at this hour. Across the street, a delicatessen was just closing, and down on the corner, the lights of a bar looked lonely.

Gretta started resolutely down the sidewalk. She fought thoughts of the razor fiend from her mind. She was afraid even of the thought of him, so afraid that a shiver, almost like a shiver of pleasure, passed over her.

She must put her mind to thinking of something else. Something deep, heavy, engrossing. She had a very brilliant mind, she knew. So much so that it set her apart, made her a kind of lone wolf. Girls were too frilly and boys too silly when they were her age. She knew all about Existentialism and could follow the torturous turns and twists of the philosophy of Nietzsche.

It all made for a great deal of loneliness when girls knew only to giggle about a dance and boys pawed at you with their revolting hands.

There’d been a boy once. Anthony. Her first year in high. Frail and gentle he had been, and her heart had gone out to him. They used to walk, he holding her hand shyly, and talk real talk about political philosophy and economic systems.

Then Anthony’s parents had moved away and taken him with them, of course. She’d cried for two whole days, brittle hard tears, and had told herself that she would never be the same again.

Engrossed in her thoughts, she passed the lighted bar with only a vague realization that it was there. She crossed the intersection, reaching the dark corner where business establishments had closed hours before.

It was then that she thought she heard footsteps. They were sharp, rapid.

She glanced over her shoulder, her heart almost stopping. There was no one.

She began shivering. The street seemed to have grown colder. How much further to her home? Five, six blocks. How could she ever manage to walk that distance?

She took a faltering step, another. Her right hand was against the building for support. Suddenly, the support wasn’t there. She had reached the corner of the building, was standing at the mouth of an alley. Heat seeped from the buildings into the alley and out of the alley over her.

She stood as if clinging to the warmth for a moment. And while she was there, a car came down the street. Light glided before it. Touched her briefly. Then the car stopped at the curb.

She threw her startled glance toward it. The door of the car opened. A man was getting out.

He came around the car. He stood looking at her the way he had looked at her in the apartment.

“You forgot your money, Gretta,” Mr. Carson said. “And Mrs. Carson was so fearful about your walking alone...”

He was coming toward her. She took a step back into the alley.

“No,” she said.

“Now, Gretta, it was only a dream. You’re not still upset, are you?”

She walked backward into the alley, staring at him. Why hadn’t she realized? The fiend could be anybody. A respectable business man, even. He had said so himself. He’d been having his private joke up there in the apartment talking about the fiend as he had.

“Gretta!” he said sharply as he moved after her.

A feeling of calm came over her. Her hand came up slowly, dipped into her bosom, came out holding the razor. It was an old-fashioned razor. She’d found it one day while rummaging through the attic for old books. The weight of it in her hand had given her a strangely pleasant feeling.

Mr. Carson was quite close to her now. She could see the anger on his face. Then something quite different was there as he saw the razor.

She struck quick and hard with all her young strength. The razor bit. Deep. Clean.

She saw him clutch his throat and fall.

She bent over him to look at the evil fiendishness in his face. Then she wiped the razor on his coat, replaced it under her tailored blouse and walked out of the alley.

She moved down the sidewalk without fear. She could go home now. Home to her room and deep, deep thoughts. The razor had saved her. The fiend was dead.

She knew.

Hadn’t she had to kill him four times?