Tatter Up (Tales from the Crypt #46, Feb/March 1955)

Me? I'm Tony Barrett. I'm not a bad-looking guy. I'm young, too. Thirty hour. Okay, so how come I could sit around on a rot-reeking couch, holding hands with a snaggle-toothed hag named Fanny Ogden? How come I could stand the mildew-yellowed wall papers, the cracked ceilings, the whole house stinking like the inside of a dug-up coffin and the stink of Fanny herself? Yeah, that's right! You got the picture. Fanny Ogden was supposed to be loaded!

TONY: "I...I've been meaning to ask you, Fanny. I just don't know how. I've been meaning to ask you if you'll marry me."

FANNY: "Oh, Tony! I've been praying you'd ask me. Dreaming of it. But never really believing you would. Oh, yes, Tony! Yes! I will marry you!"

Sure, I wanted that woebegone witch for a wife. I wanted to marry the hundred grand fortune I'd heard about. The dough her first husband left her. The miserable miser was supposed to have every last sent of it hid here in that foul-smelling filthy house.

TONY: "Then I guess...*gag*...this calls for a kiss."

FANNY: "It's been so long since I've been kissed, Tony!"

Well, I'll skip the disgusting details except to say that Fanny became Mrs. Tony Barrett and I started hitting the bottle to brace myself against living with her.

FANNY: "Aren't you coming up, Honey-Bun? It's late."

TONY: "You go ahead, Fanny. I'll be up in an hour or so. Don't wait up."

Trouble with drinking was it used to get me down. I'd worry. I'd worry real bad.

TONY: "Maybe there ain't no dough. Maybe I got a bum steer from the guy that told me."

After the first two weeks, I got real disgusted. There was no hint of the dough.

TONY: "I'm beginning to think I've been a sucker saddling myself with a dried-up, withered excuse for a female. I'll wake up one day and find out there ain't no hundred G's. Well, in a pig's eye, I will!"

So I went up into the bedroom where Fanny sat with that straggly mop of hers up in curlers. But I didn't look at Fanny twice. I headed for the closet, for my suitcase.

FANNY: "Tony? Is there something wrong?"

TONY: "Yeah, baby? You and me! I'm clearing out!"

I bounced my suitcase onto the bed and tossed my clothes into it. My bride jumped up like a bee stung her and she threw her boney arms around me.

FANNY: "Tony, please! Don't leave me! Please don't!"

TONY: "We made a mistake. Forget me, Fanny."

FANNY: "Tony, I know I'm ugly, ugly and old. But I'm rich. I never told you, did I? I've got a lot of money. And I love you, Tony. As much as I can. You're handsome and young. I have just a few years left. Stay with me and make them happy years, dear. And when I'm gone, all that money will be yours."

TONY: "Okay, baby. Okay. You talked me into it."

Well, it turned out there was money after all. The guy was right. So I did my best to make Fanny happy. I stayed. But I wondered what she lived on if she never spent any of her dough. And one day, I found out...

RAGMAN: "Is Mrs. Ogden at ho-?"

TONY: "You! The guy I met! The guy that told me about her!"

RAGMAN: "I'm a ragman. Mrs. Ogden always sells me her old rags."

TONY: "Mrs. Ogden is Mrs. Barrett now, mister. My wife! Don't you remember me? You told me about her."

RAGMAN: "You have a nice wife, sir. She's very good to me. She always has rags to sell me. I'm a ragman."

TONY: "Maybe I'm wrong, but I could swear it was you I met that night."

But at that minute, Fanny trundled down the stairs with a load of old rags. Men's suits, women's dresses, kid's clothes. The ragman grinned like an idiot when he saw them.

RAGMAN: "Fine, Mrs. Barrett. Very fine. You get seven dollars for these."

TONY: "Seven dollars for that old garbage?! Wow!"

The old creep stopped cold and gave me a fishy stare, like I had insulted him. Fanny tried to cover up.

FANNY: "Tony didn't mean anything. He just doesn't understand."

TONY: "Yeah, Mac. No hard feelings. If you want to overpay, it's your business."

RAGMAN: "Your wife has been good to me and I try to be good to her. Here you are, Mrs. Ogd-...Mrs. Barrett."

After the ragman paid Fanny, he left. I felt pretty sick inside. You can imagine.

TONY: "What's with this rag business, baby? Where do you get them?"

FANNY: "Why, I pick them up, Tony. Here and there."

Nice, huh? Being married to an old hag wasn't enough. Now I had to find out she was a rag-picker besides. That was the last straw. I had made up my mind when Fanny announced after lunch.

FANNY: "I'm going out, dear. Don't be too lonely while I'm gone."

TONY: "Yeah, Fanny. Sure."

Fanny didn't say what she was going out for, but I knew it was to do some rag-picking. Well, that was okay with me. That gave me enough time to rummage through the rubble-crammed attic after some pickings of my own.

TONY: "I got to find that dough. I got to find that dough and get away. Me, married to a toad-faced rag-picker. I'll go nuts if I have to keep on living with her!"

I turned that attic upside down, but it was no soap. I didn't find a thing.

TONY: "It's got to be in the house somewhere. You just don't hide a hundred grand in a mouse hole. I'll find it if..."

FANNY: "Tony? Where are you, Tony?"

It was Fanny calling me. I went down and got nauseous looking at her. That patched and faded dress, the two different-colored cotton stockings, and on her feet - no kidding! - sneakers. She had a dirty sack stuffed full over her shoulder.

TONY: "Looks like hunting was pretty good today, Fanny. How much you got? Eight bucks worth? Ten?"

FANNY: "Where were you, Tony?"

TONY: "I couldn't stand the mess around this house anymore, so I started cleaning up in the attic."

FANNY: "In the attic? Oh, well. That's nice."

Fanny didn't seem disturbed about the nosing around up in the attic, so I figured that's not where the hundred G's was stashed away. I was all on edge waiting for her to go out again so I could start looking somewhere else. But first the ragman turned up.

TONY: "I could swear he's the same guy that told me about Fanny."

RAGMAN: "Such nice rags, Mrs. Barrett. Such beautiful rags."

Finally, Fanny left with her rag sack and I went to work on one of the upstairs rooms, feeling through battered moth-eaten furniture, plowing through the trash-stuffed closet.

TONY: "It'll take me months to find that dough. A year, maybe! Maybe unless I'm lucky."

After a while, I got mad and ripped open the mattress on the old brass bed. I was so busy, I didn't hear Fanny sneak upstairs and creep into the room like a scrawny old cat. But suddenly, I felt her there.

TONY: "Fanny, I...!"

FANNY: "I'm glad to see you're still cleaning up, Tony."

I could tell she knew what I was up to, because she had a smile inside that glinted through her eyes. She was laughing in her guts, because I couldn't find her hoard. And it made me mad.

TONY: "Yeah, that's what I'm doing. Cleaning up this filthy pigsty! Maybe you didn't like that."

FANNY: "I said I'm glad, honey."

That's how it went for weeks. Every day that ragman came and got practically delirious over some foul rags my wife sold him.

RAGMAN: "Lovely. Absolutely lovely, Mrs. Barrett."

And every day, after she went out scrounging though Lord-knows-what trash for rags, I plunged into my treasure hunt.

TONY: "I gotta find it soon. I gotta get out of here. Every minute I stay is time out of my life worse. It's torture!"

And she would come back, knowing what I was up to, but I didn't give a hang, expect that she was all the time laughing at me and I'd get all choked up with hate for her.

FANNY: "You men are all alike. When you try to tidy up a house, it looks worse than when you started."

Finally, I couldn't take it no more. I couldn't stand Fanny giving me the horse-laugh. I couldn't stand looking at her. So one day, I went down the cellar and started digging, but not for her money.

TONY: "Now, let her come down here! Just let her come."

And when she got home that day, I listened to her call me, but I didn't answer. I made some noise and waited.

FANNY: "Why, Tony! How clever. You're going to bury all the old trash instead of having to carry it outside."

TONY: "Aw, come off it, baby. You know that's not what I'm doing."

Fanny looked at me real cold like and whispered sarcastically.

FANNY: "Of course. You're digging for treasure. A hundred thousand dollar treasure."

TONY: "Wrong again. I'm digging a grave. You're grave!"

Fanny could see by my face, I was leveling it. It was like she never expected this turn of events. She let out a little squeal and started to run. I swung the pick hard. The pick hooked her deep in her back and she hit the cellar floor like an old log. Then I went to work on that face. That awful, ugly face. It was just something I had to do. Like I was getting even for having degraded by making love to it all for months. After I finished, I dumped her bloody body into the grave and covered the whole thing over with dirt.

TONY: "Well, baby. I guess you know who got the last laugh now."

I was dog-tired from what I had done so I hit the hay early that night and slept until I heard a knock on the front door. It was the ragman.

TONY: "Look, pal, my wife took off on a long trip. She won't be back for a couple of weeks. Come back then, huh?"

RAGMAN: "Can't you sell me some rags?"

I was ready to slam the door in his face, but, just to get rid of the pest, I dragged some old towels from a closet. He didn't seem happy with them.

RAGMAN: "These aren't very nice rags, Mr. Barrett. I can't pay you much for them."

TONY: "Forget it, pal. Take them as a gift. Now go away and don't bother me!"

I spent days combing through the rest of the house. I even tore up the kitchen, smashed part the old stove. No dough! It was getting me down.

TONY: "It's got to be here somewhere! It's got to! I can't quit! I can't!"

And to top it all off, that crummy creep kept coming back. Until this morning, I flipped my lid.

TONY: "I've been over this dump from attic to cellar! I gave you every rag I could find! I got no more rags! Now, for God's sake, leave me alone!"

RAGMAN: "Mrs. Barrett would have rags for me."

Now I'm a guy with a strong conscience, so what with the ragman pestering me and Fanny laying dead in the cellar, I couldn't sleep tonight. Around midnight or so, I heard a noise in the house. I got a gun out of my suitcase and went downstairs for a look. The noise was coming from the cellar. I went down. It was him again in my house, nosing around.

TONY: "I told you I got no more rags! Now-!"

RAGMAN: "But you do. Nice rags. The clothes on her."

He was pointing at Fanny's grave. He knew that I killed her and I knew than I have to kill him. I pulled the trigger once, twice. He didn't even wince.

TONY: "I couldn't miss at such close range. I hit you twice. I can see the holes."

RAGMAN: "I loved her, Mr. Barrett. I wanted her to be happy. I didn't expect this."

I emptied the gun at him. Four more shots, but he just stood there.

RAGMAN: "She needed more than I could give her. Someone young. Someone like you. That's why I told you about her money. I wanted her to be happy."

TONY: "Die! I shot you six times! Die already!"

I kept staring stupidly at the six holes burned into his chest. Then I snatched up the pick. I swung it, catching him below the shoulder, sinking it into his back.

TONY: "You're not human! You're not! There's no blood! You're not even flesh and bone!"

RAGMAN: "Of course not, Mr. Barrett."

He leaped at me, wrapping his hands around my throat. Funny kind of hands, soft and stringy-like. He kept choking me, cutting off my air. I tore at his body, trying to making him lose his hold and my hands came away with chunks of soft, foul-smelling...

TONY: "Rags! You're nothing, but...*choke*...rags!"

RAGMAN: "That's why I sent you to her. She needed more than me. I loved her. But I knew she would never love a ragman."

TONY: "Ggnnnnnggggggg...!"

Everything's going red and black now. I hear a funny kind of music in my head and laughing. I hear Fanny laughing.