The Street That Wasn't There Read online

physicalfate of this earth ... yes, even the universe. Billions of mindsseeing trees as trees, houses as houses, streets as streets ...and not as something else. Minds that see things as they are andhave kept things as they were.... Destroy those minds and theentire foundation of matter, robbed of its regenerative power,will crumple and slip away like a column of sand...._

  His eyes followed down the page:

  _Yet this would have nothing to do with matter itself ... butonly with matter's form. For while the mind of man through longages may have moulded an imagery of that space in which he lives,mind would have little conceivable influence upon the existenceof that matter. What exists in our known universe shall existalways and can never be destroyed, only altered or transformed._

  _But in modern astrophysics and mathematics we gain an insightinto the possibility ... yes probability ... that there are otherdimensions, other brackets of time and space impinging on the onewe occupy._

  _If a pin is thrust into a shadow, would that shadow have anyknowledge of the pin? It would not, for in this case the shadowis two dimensional, the pin three dimensional. Yet both occupythe same space._

  _Granting then that the power of men's minds alone holds thisuniverse, or at least this world in its present form, may we notgo farther and envision other minds in some other plane watchingus, waiting, waiting craftily for the time they can take over thedomination of matter? Such a concept is not impossible. It is anatural conclusion if we accept the double hypothesis: that minddoes control the formation of all matter; and that other worldslie in juxtaposition with ours._

  _Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane,our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes assome stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensionalshadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us thematter which we know to be our own._

  * * * * *

  He stood astounded beside the bookcase, his eyes staring unseeinginto the fire upon the hearth.

  _He_ had written that. And because of those words he had beencalled a heretic, had been compelled to resign his position atthe university, had been forced into this hermit life.

  A tumultuous idea hammered at him. Men had died by the millionsall over the world. Where there had been thousands of minds therenow were one or two. A feeble force to hold the form of matterintact.

  * * * * *

  The plague had swept Europe and Asia almost clean of life, hadblighted Africa, had reached South America ... might even havecome to the United States. He remembered the whispers he hadheard, the words of the men at the drugstore corner, thebuildings disappearing. Something scientists could not explain.But those were merely scraps of information. He did not know thewhole story ... he could not know. He never listened to theradio, never read a newspaper.

  But abruptly the whole thing fitted together in his brain likethe missing piece of a puzzle into its slot. The significance ofit all gripped him with damning clarity.

  There were not sufficient minds in existence to retain thematerial world in its mundane form. Some other power from anotherdimension was fighting to supersede man's control _and take hisuniverse into its own plane!_

  Abruptly Mr. Chambers closed the book, shoved it back in the caseand picked up his hat and coat.

  He had to know more. He had to find someone who could tell him.

  He moved through the hall to the door, emerged into the street.On the walk he looked skyward, trying to make out the sun. Butthere wasn't any sun ... only an all pervading grayness thatshrouded everything ... not a gray fog, but a gray emptiness thatseemed devoid of life, of any movement.

  The walk led to his gate and there it ended, but as he movedforward the sidewalk came into view and the house ahead loomedout of the gray, but a house with differences.

  He moved forward rapidly. Visibility extended only a few feet and ashe approached them the houses materialized like two dimensionalpictures without perspective, like twisted cardboard soldiers liningup for review on a misty morning.

  Once he stopped and looked back and saw that the grayness hadclosed in behind him. The houses were wiped out, the sidewalkfaded into nothing.

  He shouted, hoping to attract attention. But his voice frightenedhim. It seemed to ricochet up and into the higher levels of thesky, as if a giant door had been opened to a mighty room highabove him.

  He went on until he came to the corner of Lexington. There, onthe curb, he stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker therebut he did not realize how close it was until he glanced down athis feet and saw there was nothing, nothing at all beyond thecurbstone. No dull gleam of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. Itwas as if all eternity ended here at the corner of Maple andLexington.

  With a wild cry, Mr. Chambers turned and ran. Back down thestreet he raced, coat streaming after him in the wind, bowler hatbouncing on his head.

  Panting, he reached the gate and stumbled up the walk, thankfulthat it still was there.

  On the stoop he stood for a moment, breathing hard. He glancedback over his shoulder and a queer feeling of inner numbnessseemed to well over him. At that moment the gray nothingnessappeared to thin ... the enveloping curtain fell away, and hesaw....

  Vague and indistinct, yet cast in stereoscopic outline, agigantic city was lined against the darkling sky. It was a cityfantastic with cubed domes, spires, and aerial bridges and flyingbuttresses. Tunnel-like streets, flanked on either side byshining metallic ramps and runways, stretched endlessly to thevanishing point. Great shafts of multicolored light probed hugestreamers and ellipses above the higher levels.

  And beyond, like a final backdrop, rose a titanic wall. It wasfrom that wall ... from its crenelated parapets and battlementsthat Mr. Chambers felt the eyes peering at him.

  Thousands of eyes glaring down with but a single purpose.

  And as he continued to look, something else seemed to take formabove that wall. A design this time, that swirled and writhed inthe ribbons of radiance and rapidly coalesced into strangegeometric features, without definite line or detail. A colossalface, a face of indescribable power and evil, it was, staringdown with malevolent composure.

  * * * * *

  Then the city and the face slid out of focus; the vision fadedlike a darkened magic-lantern, and the grayness moved in again.

  Mr. Chambers pushed open the door of his house. But he did notlock it. There was no need of locks ... not any more.

  A few coals of fire still smouldered in the grate and goingthere, he stirred them up, raked away the ash, piled on morewood. The flames leaped merrily, dancing in the chimney's throat.

  Without removing his hat and coat, he sank exhausted in hisfavorite chair, closed his eyes then opened them again.

  He sighed with relief as he saw the room was unchanged.Everything in its accustomed place: the clock, the lamp, theelephant ash tray, the marine print on the wall.

  Everything was as it should be. The clock measured the silencewith its measured ticking; it chimed abruptly and the vase sentup its usual sympathetic vibration.

  This was his room, he thought. Rooms acquire the personality ofthe person who lives in them, become a part of him. This was hisworld, his own private world, and as such it would be the last togo.

  But how long could he ... his brain ... maintain its existence?

  Mr. Chambers stared at the marine print and for a moment a littlebreath of reassurance returned to him. _They_ couldn't take thisaway. The rest of the world might dissolve because there wasinsufficient power of thought to retain its outward form.

  But this room was his. He alone had furnished it. He alone, sincehe had first planned the house's building, had lived here.

  This room would stay. It must stay on ... it must....

  He rose from his chair and walked across the room to the bookcase, stood staring at the second shelf with its single volume.His eyes shifted to the top shelf and swift terror gripped him.

  Fo
r all the books weren't there. A lot of books weren't there!Only the most beloved, the most familiar ones.

  So the change already had started here! The unfamiliar books weregone and that fitted in the pattern ... for it would be the leastfamiliar things that would go first.

  Wheeling, he stared across the room. Was it his imagination, ordid the lamp on the table blur and begin to fade away?

  But as he stared at it, it became clear again, a solid,substantial thing.

  For a moment real fear reached out and touched him with chillyfingers. For he knew that this room no longer was proof againstthe thing that had happened out there on the street.

  Or had it really happened? Might not all this exist within hisown mind? Might not the street be as it always was, with laughingchildren and barking dogs? Might not the Red Star confectionerystill exist, splashing the street with the red of its neon sign?

  Could it be that he was going mad? He had heard whispers when hehad passed, whispers the gossiping housewives had not intendedhim to hear. And he had heard the shouting of boys when he walkedby. They thought him mad. Could he be really