Button, Button: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson

his thin frame staggering beneath the weight of Paal Nielsen.
    "Where'd you find him?" Wheeler asked, grabbing the boy's legs to ease weight from the older man's back.
    "Down the hill," Poulter gasped. "Lyin' on the ground."
    Is he burned?
    "Don't look it. His pajamas ain't touched."
    "Give him here," the sheriff said. He shifted Paal into his own strong arms and found two large, green-pupilled eyes staring blankly at him.
    "You're awake," he said, surprised.
    The boy kept staring at him without making a sound.
    "You all right, son?" Wheeler asked. It might have been a statue he held, Paal's body was so inert, his expression so dumbly static.
    "Let's get a blanket on him," the sheriff muttered aside and started for the truck. As he walked he noticed how the boy stared at the burning house now, a look of masklike rigidity on his face.
    "Shock," murmured Poulter and the sheriff nodded grimly.
    They tried to put him down on the cab seat, a blanket over him but he kept sitting up, never speaking. The coffee Wheeler tried to give him dribbled from his lips and across his chin. The two men stood beside the truck while Paal stared through the windshield at the burning house.
    "Bad off," said Poulter. "Can't talk, cry, nor nothing."
    "He isn't burned," Wheeler said, perplexed. "How'd he get out of the house without getting burned?"
    "Maybe his folks got out, too," said Poulter.
    "Where are they then?"
    The older man shook his head. "Dunno, Harry."
    "Well, I better take him home to Cora," the sheriff said. "Can't leave him sitting out here."
    "Think I'd better go with you," Poulter said. "I have t'get the mail sorted for delivery."
    All right."
    Wheeler told the other four men he'd bring back food and replacements in an hour or so. Then Poulter and he climbed into the cab beside Paal and he jabbed his boot toe on the starter. The engine coughed spasmodically, groaned over, then caught. The sheriff raced it until it was warm, then eased it into gear. The truck rolled off slowly down the dirt road that led to the highway.
    Until the burning house was no longer visible, Paal stared out the back window, face still immobile. Then, slowly, he turned, the blanket slipping off his thin shoulders. Tom Poulter put it back over him.
    "Warm enough?" he asked.
    The silent boy looked at Poulter as if he'd never heard a human voice in his life.
    As soon as she heard the truck turn off the road, Cora Wheeler's quick right hand moved along the stove-front switches. Before her husband's bootfalls sounded on the back porch steps, the bacon lay neatly in strips across the frying pan, white moons of pancake batter were browning on the griddle, and the already-brewed coffee was heating.
    "Harry."
    There was a sound of pitying distress in her voice as she saw the boy in his arms. She hurried across the kitchen.
    "Let's get him to bed," Wheeler said. "I think maybe he's in shock."
    The slender woman moved up the stairs on hurried feet, threw open the door of what had been David's room, and moved to the bed. When Wheeler passed through the doorway she had the covers peeled back and was plugging in an electric blanket.
    "Is he hurt?" she asked.
    "No." He put Paal down on the bed.
    "Poor darling," she murmured, tucking in the bed-clothes around the boy's frail body. "Poor little darling." She stroked back the soft blond hair from his forehead and smiled down at him.
    "There now, go to sleep, dear. It's all right. Go to sleep."
    Wheeler stood behind her and saw the seven-year-old boy staring up at Cora with that
    same dazed, lifeless expression. It hadn't changed once since Tom Poulter had brought him out of the woods.
    The sheriff turned and went down to the kitchen. There he phoned for replacements, then turned the pancakes and bacon, and poured himself a cup of coffee. He was drinking it when Cora came down the back stairs and returned to the stove.
    "Are his parents-?" she began.
    "I don't know," Wheeler said, shaking his head. "We couldn't get near the