SEVEN DAY TERROR
BY R. A. LAFFERTY
Things just vanished. It was simple. As
a matter of fact, it was child's play!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, March 1962.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Is there anything you want to make disappear?" Clarence Willoughbyasked his mother.
"A sink full of dishes is all I can think of. How will you do it?"
"I just built a disappearer. All you do is cut the other end out of abeer can. Then you take two pieces of red cardboard with peepholes inthe middle and fit them in the ends. You look through the peepholes andblink. Whatever you look at will disappear."
"Oh."
"But I don't know if I can make them come back. We'd better try it onsomething else. Dishes cost money."
As always, Myra Willoughby had to admire the wisdom of hernine-year-old son. She would not have had such foresight herself. Healways did.
"You can try it on Blanche Manners' cat outside there. Nobody will careif it disappears except Blanche Manners."
"All right."
He put the disappearer to his eye and blinked. The cat disappeared fromthe sidewalk outside.
His mother was interested. "I wonder how it works. Do you know how itworks?"
"Yes. You take a beer can with both ends cut out and put in two piecesof cardboard. Then you blink."
"Never mind. Take it outside and play with it. You hadn't better makeanything disappear in here till I think about this."
But when he had gone his mother was oddly disturbed.
"I wonder if I have a precocious child. Why, there's lots of grownpeople who wouldn't know how to make a disappearer that would work. Iwonder if Blanche Manners will miss her cat very much?"
Clarence went down to the Plugged Nickel, a pot house on the corner.
"Do you have anything you want to make disappear, Nokomis?"
"Only my paunch."
"If I make it disappear it'll leave a hole in you and you'll bleed todeath."
"That's right, I would. Why don't you try it on the fire plug outside?"
This in a way was one of the happiest afternoons ever in theneighborhood. The children came from blocks around to play in theflooded streets and gutters, and if some of them drowned (and we don'tsay that they did drown) in the flood (and brother! it was a flood),why, you have to expect things like that. The fire engines (whoeverheard of calling fire engines to put out a flood?) were apparatus-deepin the water. The policemen and ambulance men wandered around wet andbewildered.
"Resuscitator, resuscitator, anybody wanna resuscitator," chantedClarissa Willoughby.
"Oh, shut up," said the ambulance attendants.
Nokomis, the bar man in the Plugged Nickel, called Clarence aside.
"I don't believe, just for the moment, I'd tell anyone what happened tothat fire plug," he said.
"I won't tell if you won't tell," said Clarence.
Officer Comstock was suspicious. "There's only seven possibleexplanations. One of the seven Willoughby kids did it. I dunno how.It'd take a bulldozer to do it, and then there'd be something left ofthe plug. But however they did it, one of them did it."
Officer Comstock had a talent for getting near the truth of darkmatters. This is why he was walking a beat out here in the boondocksinstead of sitting in a chair downtown.
"Clarissa!" said Officer Comstock in a voice like thunder.
"Resuscitator, res