Button, Button: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson Page A

house."
    "But the boy-?"
    "Tom Poulter found him outside."
    "Outside."
    "We don't know how he got out," he said. "All we know's he was there."
    His wife grew silent. She slid pancakes on a dish and put the dish in front of him. She put her hand on his shoulder.
    "You look tired," she said. "Can you go to bed?"
    "Later," he said.
    She nodded, then, patting his shoulder, turned away. "The bacon will be done directly," she said.
    He grunted. Then, as he poured maple syrup over the stack of cakes, he said, "I expect they are dead, Cora. It's an awful fire; still going when I left. Nothing we could do about it."
    "That poor boy," she said.
    She stood by the stove watching her husband eat wearily.
    "I tried to get him to talk," she said, shaking her head, "but he never said a word."
    "Never said a word to us either," he told her, "just stared."
    He looked at the table, chewing thoughtfully.
    "Like he doesn't even know how to talk," he said.
    A little after ten that morning the waterfall came-a waterfall of rain-and the burning house sputtered and hissed into charred, smoke-fogged ruins.
    Red-eyed and exhausted, Sheriff Wheeler sat motionless in the truck cab until the deluge had slackened. Then, with a chest-deep groan, he pushed open the door and slid to the ground. There, he raised the collar of his slicker and pulled down the wide-brimmed Stetson more tightly on his skull. He walked around to the back of the covered truck.
    "Come on," he said, his voice hoarsely dry. He trudged through the clinging mud towards the house.
    The front door still stood. Wheeler and the other men bypassed it and clambered over the collapsed living room wall. The sheriff felt thin waves of heat from the still-glowing timbers and the throat-clogging reek of wet, smoldering rugs and upholstery turned his edgy stomach.
    He stepped across some half-burned books on the floor and the roasted bindings crackled beneath his tread. He kept moving, into the hall, breathing through gritted teeth, rain spattering off his shoulders and back. I hope they got out, he thought, I hope to God they got out.
    They hadn't. They were still in their bed, no longer human, blackened to a hideous, joint-twisted crisp. Sheriff Wheeler's face was taut and pale as he looked down at them.
    One of the men prodded a wet twig at something on the mattress.
    "Pipe," Wheeler heard him say above the drum of rain. "Must have fell asleep smokin'."
    "Get some blankets," Wheeler told them. "Put them in the back of the truck."
    Two of the men turned away without a word and Wheeler heard them clump away over the rubble.
    He was unable to take his eyes off Professor Holger Nielsen and his wife Fanny, scorched into grotesque mockeries of the handsome couple he remembered-the tall, bigframed Holger, calmly imperious; the slender, auburn-haired Fanny, her face a soft, rosecheeked-
    Abruptly, the sheriff turned and stumped from the room, almost tripping over a fallen beam.
    The boy-what would happen to the boy now? That day was the first time Paal had ever left this house in his life. His parents were the fulcrum of his world; Wheeler knew that much. No wonder there had been that look of shocked incomprehension on Paal's face.
    Yet how did he know his mother and father were dead?
    As the sheriff crossed the living room, he saw one of the men looking at a partially charred book.
    "Look at this," the man said, holding it out.
    Wheeler glanced at it, his eyes catching the title: The Unknown Mind.
    He turned away tensely. "Put it down!" he snapped, quitting the house with long, anxious strides. The memory of how the Nielsens looked went with him; and something else. A question.
    How did Paal get out of the house?
    Paal woke up.
    For a long moment he stared up at the formless shadows that danced and fluttered across the ceiling. It was raining out. The wind was rustling tree boughs outside the window, causing shadow movements in this strange room. Paal lay motionless in the warm center of the bed, air