After Midnight

by Richard Laymon

  And suddenly wished, badly, that I hadn’t shut it.

  What if I open it and he’s standing right there?

  I pictured him on the other side of the door, naked and hard, dripping water onto the hallway carpet, grinning at me. He’d grabbed Charlie’s saber on his way through the house, and held it overhead with both hands like a Samurai all eager to split me down the middle.

  My imagination likes to torture me with stuff like that.

  I figured he probably wasn’t really there, or even in the house at all.

  But my hand and arm felt frozen. I couldn’t force myself to open the door.

  Then all of a sudden I got to thinking the knob might start to turn in my hand and he might throw the door open, crashing it into me and rushing in.

  This was just my imagination at work, and I knew it.

  But it scared me.

  I let go of the knob and backed away from the door, pretty much expecting it to fly open. But it stayed shut. So then I turned around and faced the sliding glass door.

  From where I stood, I could see the pool. Not much of it, though.

  And not the stranger.

  Where is he?

  This time, I was extra careful crossing the room. My feet hit nothing. As I neared the door, I put a hand forward. Soon, my fingers touched the cool glass.

  I eased closer, peering out.

  Still no sign of him.

  When my breasts met the glass, I stopped. This was about as close to the door as I could get without bumping my nose or forehead.

  I stared out.

  Where’d he go?

  He didn’t seem to be in the pool, and he obviously wasn’t standing nearby on the concrete or lawn.

  Maybe he’d gone away.

  Maybe he’s already in the house.

  The chill from the glass, seeping through my robe, was making my nipples ache. I eased back a little to get away from it.

  The glass in front of my face had fogged up, so I wiped it with my hand.

  And that’s when I saw him.

  He was in the pool, after all.

  Maybe he’d been below the surface for a while. Or maybe he’d been floating somewhere that I couldn’t see him.

  Anyway, there he was.

  He drifted on his back near the middle of the pool, his arms spread out, his legs apart. He didn’t move a muscle. The water, calm and almost motionless itself, rippled around him, turned him slowly, eased him along as if it had a vague destination for him but wasn’t in any hurry.

  His wet skin shone like silver in the moonlight.

  He looked asleep.

  He was probably awake, though, feeling the lift of the water beneath him, enjoying its cool lick, relishing the warm breezes drifting over the regions of his skin that weren’t below the surface.

  He looked as if he might be waiting for a lover to come, drawn to him by his open naked body, lured by the invitation of the pillar of flesh that stood tall and ready, shiny in the moonlight.

  What if it’s me?

  What if he’s waiting for me?

  He wants me, knows I’m watching, thinks he can lure me out of the house.

  You’ve got another think coming, buster. You can wave that thing in the air till hell freezes over, or IT does. I’m not stepping one foot outside.

  Just because he looked beautiful in the moonlight didn’t mean he wasn’t a rapist, a killer, a madman.

  There had to be something wrong with him. A normal person doesn’t sneak out of the woods in the middle of the night, strip naked and go for a dip in the swimming pool of a total stranger.

  Maybe he knows Charlie or Serena and they told him it’s okay.

  That hadn’t occurred to me before.

  But it seemed highly unlikely. Virtually impossible. For one thing, they wouldn’t give someone permission to use the pool in their absence without telling me about it. After all, I’d be here and take him for an intruder.

  For another thing, I knew all their friends. The man in the pool wasn’t one of them.

  I didn’t think so, anyway.

  It was hard to tell exactly what his face looked like, but I was pretty sure that a body as fine as his didn’t belong to anyone I’d ever seen around the house or pool.

  Serena and Charlie were sociable people. They did like to invite friends over for pool parties. But I was the only one with permission to use it when they were away. That’s another reason I knew this guy didn’t belong here.

  Nobody but me was allowed in the pool when they weren’t home.

  As far as I knew, anyway.

  And I knew plenty. I’d been living over the garage for three years, and I could see the pool from my windows.

  People just didn’t show up and start using it. Whenever I’d seen anyone at the pool, Serena or Charlie or both of them had been there, too.

  Of course, I hadn’t spent all my time watching for pool activity. Things might’ve gone on, now and then, that I didn’t know about.

  But not much.

  I’ve seen squirrels, raccoons, deer and other animals come out of the woods to drink at the pool. I’ve watched Charlie swim his laps at dawn when he probably assumed I was asleep. I’ve even observed the times, fairly often in the summer, when Serena and Charlie went skinny-dipping late at night. They kept the pool lights off, of course, and spoke in whispers or not at all. Whenever they used the pool that way, they always ended up making love. They did it right out in the open, so they must’ve figured I was asleep or blind. Whereas, actually, I happened to be looking out my window.

  I was looking out my window more than anyone would’ve guessed, but I’d never found a stranger in the pool.

  Not until tonight.

  He’d hardly moved at all in the past few minutes. Just drifted this way and that on his back. I began to wonder if maybe he’d fallen asleep. If asleep, he must’ve been having a doozy of a dream.

  The telephone rang.

  After midnight, and it suddenly let out a loud jangle in the silence and darkness of the den.

  I jumped and yelped.

  Out on the pool, the stranger’s head jerked sideways in the water. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I knew he was staring straight at me.

  4

  THE PHONE CALL

  Not that he could see me.

  If you’re in real darkness and someone else is out in the moonlight, he doesn’t stand a chance of spotting you.

  But I felt his eyes on me.

  I flinched as the phone rang again.

  A phone isn’t meant to ring that late at night. It scares you. Even if you’re not alone in the house and spying on a prowler, the ringing rips through your nerves.

  Friends don’t call after nine. Not unless there’s an emergency.

  It rang again, and I flinched again.

  Out in the pool, the man rolled over, turned and started gliding toward me with his head up.

  The phone rang again as I took slow backward steps away from the glass door.

  Why did it have to be so loud?

  I knew he could hear it. Maybe not this particular phone, but a general clamor. I’d been swimming in the pool myself, sometimes, when people called. Even with the doors and windows shut, you could hear rings and chirps and warbles and tweets from all over the house. I don’t even know how many phones Serena had, but at least five—maybe seven or eight. It was a big house, and there were phones in nearly every room.

  The only answering machine was in the den.

  With me.

  After the fourth ring came clicks that meant the machine was responding.

  I kept creeping backward.

  Outside, the stranger arrived at the side of the pool. He stood up, put his hands on the concrete edge, and seemed to stare straight at me.

  I’m not big on distances. My guess, though—he was only twelve or fifteen feet away from the glass door. And I was on the other side of it, five or six feet back.

  More clicks from the machine.

  A man
’s voice said, “Ah, you finally got yourself an answering machine. Hope it’s not because of me. But it probably is, huh? Who’s the guy you got to record the greeting for you?” A pause. “Never mind. It’s none of my business, I guess. Anyway, are you there? Judy? If you’re there, would you pick up? Please? I know you probably don’t want to talk to me, but…I don’t want to lose you. I love you. Are you there? Please, talk to me.”

  He went silent.

  The man in the pool jumped, planted a foot on the edge, and climbed out.

  “The thing is, I’m not going to call again. I’m not going to beg you to change your mind. I’m not going to plead with you. I’ve got to hang on to a little of my dignity, you know?”

  The man started walking slowly toward the glass door.

  “So this’ll be it. The ball’s in your court. If you really want it to be over, fine. I’ll accept that. I’ll never bug you again. It’ll be adios, Tony. Forever. I don’t want that to happen, but hell…Are you there, Judy? It feels weird, talking to you this way. Would you please pick up, if you’re there?”

  The stranger arrived at the door and peered in.

  Could he see me?

  Could he hear the quick loud thudding of my heart?

  I stood motionless, staring at him. He had his arms raised like a guy who’s been ordered to “stick ’em up.” His open hands were pressed against the glass. So was his forehead. But his nose didn’t touch the glass. Neither did his chest or belly or legs. Nothing else touched except for the tip of his penis, which looked like a smooth and strange little face pushing against the glass to help him search for me.

  “Okay,” Tony said to the answering machine. “If that’s how you want it. Anyway, I’ve moved to a new place. I couldn’t stand being in the old apartment anymore, not after everything that’d happened there.” He sounded as if he were trying not to cry. “I’ll give you my number, and you can call me if you want to. If you don’t call, I’ll understand.”

  As Tony gave his new telephone number, the man outside took a step away from the door, reached down and grabbed the handle and jerked it.

  Snatching up the phone with one hand, I blurted, “Tony!”

  With my other hand, I slapped up the light switch.

  A lamp came on by the couch.

  The sudden brightness hurt my eyes, made me squint, obliterated my moonlit view of the stranger. The sliding door was now a mirror. It showed me a hollow, transparent version of the coffee table, the lamp, and me.

  I saw myself with the phone against my left ear. I stood crooked, still bent sideways to the right as if frozen in my reach for the light switch. My belt had come loose. The open robe seemed to split me down the middle. It still covered my left side from shoulder to thigh, but my entire right side was bare to the gaze of the stranger.

  If he was still there.

  He must’ve leaped back when the light first came on.

  Now he returned, looming out of the darkness just beyond the door and pressing his body against the glass.

  Tony was talking into my ear. I didn’t pay much attention, but he seemed to believe I was Judy.

  The stranger gaped in at me. With his body pressed to the door, the lamplight reached him. He looked awful—grotesquely flattened and spread out—like an alien creature trying to ooze through the glass.

  “HELLO!” I shouted into the phone. “POLICE! I WANT TO REPORT A PROWLER!”

  “Huh?” Tony asked. “A prowler?”

  The stranger writhed against the glass, licked it, rubbed it with his body and open hands as if making believe it was me.

  From where I stood, it looked like me.

  My reflection was superimposed over him.

  He couldn’t see that, though. And didn’t need to, because he had a great view of the real me.

  “YES! HE’S IN THE YARD! HE’S TRYING TO FORCE HIS WAY IN. THIS IS 3838 WOODSIDE LANE. YOU’VE GOT TO GET OVER HERE RIGHT AWAY!”

  “Who is this? This isn’t Judy?”

  “HE’S A WHITE MALE, ABOUT TWENTY YEARS OLD, SIX FEET TALL, A HUNDRED AND EIGHTY POUNDS, WITH SHORT BLOND HAIR.”

  “Is this for real? Do you really have a prowler?”

  “YES! AND HE’S NAKED, AND HE’S TRYING TO GET IN! YOU’VE GOT TO SEND A SQUAD CAR RIGHT AWAY!”

  “Holy shit,” Tony said.

  “PLEASE HURRY!”

  “Do you want me to hang up and call the police?”

  Taking the phone away from my mouth, I yelled at the man, “THE COPS ARE ON THE WAY, YOU SICK BASTARD! THEY’LL BE HERE IN TWO MINUTES!”

  I know he heard me, but he seemed to be lost in his own world of skin and glass and me.

  Watching him, I saw myself. I looked like a ghost being molested by a mad, drooling mime. He writhed against me, caressed me, kissed me, then suddenly went rigid and started to jerk, shaking the door in its frame. For a moment, I thought he was having a seizure.

  In a way, he was.

  When I realized what was going on, I gasped and turned my head away.

  My eyes met the light switch.

  I shot my hand out and flipped it down. Darkness clamped down on the room.

  The door stopped shaking.

  I looked.

  The stranger took a few steps backward, then whirled around. He ran to the edge of the pool, dived in, and swam for the other side.

  While I watched him, I heard Tony’s tiny, faint voice coming from the phone’s earpiece down by my side.

  The stranger boosted himself out of the pool, scurried over the concrete, swooped down and snatched up his shorts. He didn’t put them on. Clutching them in one hand, he dashed onto the lawn and ran toward the woods.

  I lifted the phone.

  Tony sounded frantic.“…okay? Hello? What’s happening?”

  “I’m here,” I said.

  “What happened? What’s going on?”

  “I think it’s all right now. He just ran away.”

  “You’d better call the cops.”

  “He thinks I just did. That’s what scared him off.”

  “Maybe you’d better call them for real.”

  “I don’t know. He’s gone now.”

  “How do you know he won’t come back?”

  “Thanks a lot, Tony.”

  “Sorry. Are you okay?”

  “Just a little shook up. I’m all by myself, and he came sneaking out of the woods behind the house.”

  “You said he was naked?”

  “Yeah. Well, he took off his shorts and started swimming in the pool.”

  “Weird. You don’t have any idea who he was?”

  “Not a clue. Just some guy who came out of the woods.”

  “Miller’s Woods?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s bad. A lot of real oddballs hang around in there.”

  “This is the first time anyone ever came sneaking out to use the pool. That I know about, anyway.”

  “You’re lucky that’s all he did.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I thought about what he’d done on the door, but kept my mouth shut about it.

  “You really should call the cops,” Tony told me.

  “I know. You’re probably right.”

  “They keep finding bodies in those woods.”

  He wasn’t telling me anything new. “Now and then,” I said. “But most of them weren’t killed there. They were just dropped off, you know? It’s not like there’s necessarily a homicidal maniac hanging around in the woods.”

  “I sure wouldn’t want to live near them.”

  “Well, I don’t mind. I like it, normally. It’s nice and peaceful.”

  “You live there alone?”

  “I’m alone tonight.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t be. I know you don’t want to hear this, but you really can’t be sure he won’t come back.”

  “I wish you’d stop saying that.”

  “You sound like a nice person.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’d hate to thi
nk you might end up…you know.”

  “I won’t,” I told him.

  “Do you have a name?” he asked.

  “No, actually I’m one of those people who isn’t that lucky.”

  He laughed a little, and I smiled.

  “My name’s Alice,” I said. (That isn’t really what I told him. I told him my true name, which is a secret as far as this book is concerned…unless you’re smart enough to find my hidden message.)

  “Hello, Alice,” he said.

  “Hello, Tony.” (Tony isn’t his real name, either, by the way—in case you were daydreaming when you read the introduction. Tony, Serena, Charlie, Judy, etc.—all made up. The same goes for Miller’s Woods, and so on. Just thought I’d remind you.)

  “I guess I dialed a wrong number,” Tony said.

  “I guess you did.”

  “I was trying to call this gal…”

  “I know. Judy. She must’ve dumped you, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You probably called her once too many times after midnight.”

  “Think so?”

  “It scares people. You shouldn’t do it.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Besides which, it makes you sound desperate. If you want to get back on Judy’s good side, you don’t want her to think you’re desperate about it.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “You bet I’m right.”

  “Good thing I dialed the wrong number,” he said.

  “I’m glad you did. My creepy visitor would probably still be here.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. Go to bed, I guess.”

  “You shouldn’t stay there. Not by yourself.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Is there a neighbor you could stay with for the rest of the night?”

  “Not exactly. Nobody nearby.”

  “What about…?”

  “Anyway, I’ll be fine. I really don’t think he’ll be coming back tonight. As far as he knows, the cops are on the way over.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Tony said.

  “So do I.”

  “I’d hate to read about you in the paper.”

  “Me, too.”

  He laughed quietly. Then he said, “I’m serious about this, though. Is there a friend you can call? Someone who might be willing to come over? Maybe a relative?”