After Midnight

by Richard Laymon

  This way, at least, was restful.

  Just don’t fall asleep, I warned myself.

  There probably wasn’t much danger of that. Though I was worn out, I didn’t feel sleepy. I was too tense for that. And too uncomfortable. The tumble down the slope had bruised and scratched me. I felt small pains in a dozen places, and I itched in about a dozen more.

  I ached to rub my injuries, scratch my itches.

  But I couldn’t do it.

  Judy might be watching.

  Or so I thought, anyway, until she shrieked, “No!” into the night somewhere far away.

  18

  CRIES IN THE NIGHT

  Either Judy, or someone else.

  It had to be Judy, though. A woman’s voice, and coming from the right direction. Who else could it be?

  If it was Judy, she’d missed my tumble down the slope and she wasn’t watching me now. My fall had roughed me up, but accomplished nothing. I got to my feet, wincing a couple of times.

  Standing there, I searched my pockets. Tony’s wallet was still in my back pocket. I still had all the keys, too. Apparently, nothing had fallen out except the gun.

  I wiped the sweat off my face and rubbed my hurts and itches and stared into the woods.

  Nothing to see.

  I heard the trees whispering quietly with the breeze. Birds and crickets and other forest sounds. But not another outcry.

  Okay, I thought. What’s going on?

  She’d shrieked like someone scared witless, or hurt, or both.

  So, was it real or fake?

  If fake, she must be trying to lure me into a trap. A gutsy move. A crazy move. Hell, I was bigger and tougher than Judy. I’d already beaten the snot out of her. And I had a gun. Her only real chance of survival was to avoid me.

  But you never know with people. They do weird, stupid stuff sometimes. Especially when they’re scared. Maybe Judy thought she could out-smart me.

  Maybe she’d figured out a great, flawless trap.

  On the other hand, she might be in real trouble.

  Either way, I didn’t have a choice. I had to go looking for her. And finish her off, unless somebody’d already saved me the trouble.

  I wasn’t going anywhere, though, without the pistol.

  I wanted to find my shoes, too, but they didn’t matter much. The .22 mattered plenty.

  Turning away from the woods, I searched the grassy area around my feet, looking for the gun. I’d been aware of losing my shoes early in the fall, but didn’t have a clue as to when the gun had slipped out of my pocket.

  It didn’t seem to be nearby, so I began to study the route of my fall. For the most part, the slope was clear of trees. A lot of moonlight got through. Before even starting to climb, I picked out half a dozen chunks of darkness. A couple of them would probably turn out to be my shoes. I saw nothing that might be the pistol, though.

  I started trudging up the slope, taking it slowly, hunched over, my knees bent and my arms swaying. I must’ve looked like a kid playing elephant. It was a nice, relaxing posture. But I was too tired and hot to be comfortable. My shirt stuck to my back with sweat. My eyes stung. My face and chest itched with trickles of sweat.

  I started out thinking the pistol would be the real problem. Because it was flat and so much smaller than the shoes, it might disappear in the grass. I even worried that I might not be able to find it at all.

  But I found it first, only about fifteen feet up the slope. The way I was bent over with my arms swaying, I almost brushed it with my fingertips before seeing it. The pistol lay nestled in the thick grass. In the moonlight, its stainless steel finish looked gray like dirty snow.

  I snatched it up.

  Then I rubbed it against the front of my cut-offs to wipe off the dew from the grass.

  Afraid of losing it again, I kept it in my hand.

  A few minutes later, I came across one of the loafers. I slipped my foot into it and went looking for the other.

  One shoe off and one shoe on…

  “Help!”

  This time, I recognized Judy’s voice. Or thought so, anyway. It’s how she might’ve sounded, squealing out a plea to be saved.

  She’s gotta be in deep shit.

  Or else a great actress.

  But my guts told me this wasn’t faked.

  So did my skin. Though burning hot and slick with sweat, I felt goosebumps spreading up my thighs and belly and breasts. The hairs on my arms stiffened. Prickles scurried up my back and the nape of my neck. My nipples tingled and got hard. Goosebumps crawled over my cheeks, my forehead. My scalp crawled.

  It’s pretty much what happens every time I get a strong case of the creeps, the willies, the heebie-jeebies.

  And I had them now.

  Something about the sound of Judy’s cry for help, maybe. Or what it triggered in my imagination.

  Something awful had happened to her.

  Or someONE.

  Something or someone worse than me.

  Turning around slowly, being careful not to slip on the wet slope, I stared at the woods. There was nothing to see.

  Judy’s cries had come from deeper in. The first had sounded nearer than the second. Was she running away from a pursuer? Or was she already caught, and being carried?

  If he kills her, I’m in business.

  But killing her was my job. It gave me a queer feeling to think of it being done by someone else.

  Who? My prowler?

  I hurried to find the other shoe. No more cries came from the woods while I hunted for it.

  Is she already dead?

  Did she get away?

  This might sound odd, but I didn’t want either to be true.

  Finally, I found the loafer. I slid my foot into it, then turned around and started making my way down the slope again—carefully. I’d found out the hard way that the slope was tricky and not as gentle as it seemed.

  Safe at the bottom, I broke into a run. And ran like crazy until I came to the picnic table. There, I stopped and listened. Mostly, all I heard were my heartbeats and my hard breathing.

  What’s he doing to her?

  The sick bastard.

  I thought about what he’d done to the glass door.

  Might not even be him.

  I stepped past the end of the table, took my usual route to the creek, and knelt in the water. Then I twisted around and sat down on the bottom. A tricky thing to pull off, one-handed. But I managed to do it and keep the pistol high and dry.

  No, not because I was afraid of getting my ammo wet.

  As a fan of mysteries and thrillers, I’ve read enough to figure out that most people who write them don’t know squat about firearms. (That goes double for the people who make movies and television shows.) One thing I know, and some of them don’t, is that ammo won’t get hurt by a little dip in the creek.

  The reason I kept the pistol high was in case I needed it fast. I didn’t want to shoot it and find out, too late, that I had a barrel full of water. I wasn’t sure about a .22, but some guns can blow up if you pull a stunt like that.

  (Anyway, I just wanted to make that clear. I don’t want you to read my book and think I’m one of those idiots who worries about a little water wrecking my ammunition.)

  Okay.

  So there I was, sitting in the creek and holding my pistol overhead while I rested and cooled off. The water sure felt good. Cool and smooth. With my left hand, I cupped some of it into my mouth.

  And there I sat.

  Not really wanting to move.

  The water felt great, rushing against me. And it tasted great, too. Fresh and woodsy.

  But I was wasting time.

  Scared to move.

  On my right, the woods loomed high, hiding the moonlight. A kingdom of darkness. It was where I needed to go. Judy was over in that direction.

  But so was whatever horrible creature or person had made her shriek.

  I didn’t want to go there.

  I felt safe in the creek. A
nd the area to my left seemed even safer. That’s where the picnic table was. The one I’d had Judy on. I could see a bit of it through the trees. In that same direction was the slope to the parking lot. And Judy’s parked car. And the roads out of the woods.

  In that direction, nothing bad would happen to me.

  I could even drive away in Judy’s car, leave it somewhere in town, and walk home.

  I wanted to do it.

  To put an end to all this. To stop being scared and tired and hurt. To go home and lock myself in my good, safe room above the garage and maybe never come out again.

  I longed to do that, and forget all about Judy.

  And save myself.

  Whatever got her might get me.

  Leaning forward, I lowered my shoulders and head into the creek.

  I would’ve looked very odd to anyone watching me.

  All they’d see was my arm sticking up, holding the pistol high. Like the Lady of the Lake with better weaponry.

  I’ve got a gun, gang. What the hell am I scared of?

  I stayed under for a while longer. Then my lungs started to ache, so I came up for air. And struggled to my feet. And trudged through the knee-deep water, my shirt clinging like someone else’s sodden skin, my shorts so wet and heavy that they hung low on my hips, ready to fall.

  I climbed the bank on the side of the creek where the forest began. With the pistol clamped under my left armpit, I tugged my cut-offs up and tightened the belt. Then I took off my loafers, emptied them, and put them on again.

  I was shivering slightly. No matter how hot the air is, it always feels chilly when you first come out of water. Also, I hadn’t gotten over being scared.

  The pistol gave me enough courage to go on, but it didn’t make me fearless.

  I was still vulnerable.

  After all, a .22 doesn’t pack much punch.

  And I’d never counted the rounds in the magazine, so I didn’t know how many cartridges were left. They were singlestacked, I knew that. Fully loaded, a magazine that size might hold about eight or ten.

  I’d already fired one.

  And maybe it hadn’t been fully loaded to start with.

  I could find out how many rounds were in the gun. But not without unloading it. Which didn’t seem like a great thing to try. In the dark, I might drop a couple of cartridges and lose them on the ground. Or what if somebody came along while I stood there with a handful of loose ammo?

  Doesn’t matter, anyway. When I run out, I run out.

  Let it be a surprise.

  I started walking into the dark woods, keeping the pistol down close to my side, raising my left arm in front of me for protection against crashing into tree trunks or low branches. I walked slowly, unsure of where my feet might land. Very soon, the chill from the water went away. The air again felt hot and heavy. Here, surrounded by trees, I felt no breeze at all.

  I walked without knowing where to find Judy.

  Just that her cries had come from deeper in the woods, somewhere east of the creek.

  I walked slowly in that direction and tried not to make much noise.

  19

  THE SEARCH

  Soon, I began to think it was a waste of time. I might search till dawn and never find Judy.

  How could I find her? Miller’s Woods went on for miles, and she might be almost anywhere. Maybe I’d already missed her. I might’ve walked on past her and left her behind. With any step I took, she could’ve been a hundred yards away to the north or south. Or sprawled unseen in the darkness five feet away.

  It would take a huge stroke of luck for me to find her.

  And maybe that wouldn’t be so lucky.

  Maybe I’d be luckier not finding her.

  If she’d faked the outcries, a trap was waiting for me. If she hadn’t faked them, I might have to face whatever had torn those shrieks out of her.

  Even if I couldn’t find Judy, it might find me.

  It or he.

  Probably a he.

  Most monsters are.

  At any moment, he might jump me from behind. Take me down and drag me away. Do things to me so I would cry out in terror and pain just like Judy.

  The pistol might not do much good if he caught me by surprise. Or if there turned out to be more than one guy.

  I knew what it was like. All of it. To be jumped from behind. To be outnumbered. To be beaten and tortured. To be raped, gang-banged, sodomized and all the rest.

  No, not all the rest.

  I hadn’t been killed.

  Not yet.

  I’d been left for dead, but not killed.

  I’ll tell you about it. I hadn’t planned on getting into stuff like this, but what the hell. Why should I keep it a secret?

  It happened when I was eighteen, and got a flat tire on a highway outside Tucson. I was alone. Alone, I tried to change the flat. But three guys in a pickup truck stopped to “help.” They helped me, all right. Drove me off into the desert and spent all night “doing” me, doing everything that popped into their sick ugly heads. By the time they were done with the fun, I apparently seemed to be dead. So they dug a grave for me, rolled me into it and covered me up. Then they drove off and left me. I would’ve ended up dead for real, but I’d landed at the bottom of the grave with an air pocket under my face. I also would’ve ended up dead if they hadn’t been such lazy bastards. They’d dug the grave too shallow, hadn’t bothered to pile some heavy rocks on top, and so I managed to crawl out. Then I was picked up by a family of off-roaders who happened to come along in a Jeep.

  You might think nothing would scare me, after being through a deal like that.

  But guess what.

  It’s the opposite. Everything scares me.

  You’ve probably heard the saying, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” It might be true, as far as it goes. I have gotten stronger and stronger from all the bad stuff. But I’ve also gotten more and more afraid.

  So even as I crept through the dark woods hoping to find Judy, I shivered with fear and felt ready to scream and wanted to run for home.

  If the fear wasn’t bad enough—and it was plenty—I also had accidents. I was trudging through rough wilderness, not hiking on a path through a park. All I could see were a few bits and pieces of moonlight, dim gray blurs that might be anything, and blackness that might be nothing.

  I hated walking into the black places. I might drop into a pit or step on a body or get leaped on by a madman. And the gray places weren’t much better.

  Three or four times, I tripped and fell down.

  Twice, I scraped the top of my head against low limbs.

  Countless times, I was whipped across the face by unseen branches or bushes.

  Only once did I get the real shaft. Striding through a black place, I walked straight into the end of a large, broken limb. I never saw it coming and didn’t even slow down. Just plowed into it. It slammed into me above my belly button. It probably would’ve plunged all the way through and killed me if it hadn’t been so thick. Instead of skewering me, though, the branch gouged me, caved me in, punched my breath out and knocked me backward. I fell sprawling.

  For a while, I twisted and squirmed and couldn’t breathe.

  When I was able to catch a breath, I curled onto my side and clutched my belly. The wound felt raw and seering hot. Not very deep, but awfully painful. I held it with both hands and cried.

  Finally, I was ready to get up. I found the pistol on the ground beside me, then struggled to my feet.

  Judy no longer mattered much.

  I really had no hope of finding her, anyway.

  And so what? With or without me, she probably wouldn’t leave the woods alive. Not unless she’d faked those cries, which I doubted.

  Even if she gets away, I told myself, she doesn’t know who I am or where I live.

  She knows my face.

  So what? Unless she bumps into me at the supermarket…

  What if she describes me to a police artist?

/>   That could be bad. Sometimes, those drawings turn out to look exactly like the suspect. I might be watching the TV news in a few days and end up staring at my own face. Most of the people in Chester would see it, too. Even though I pretty much kept to myself, I wasn’t a total recluse. I’d be recognized, for sure.

  On the other hand, maybe Judy wouldn’t be able to describe me. Though we’d spent time together in her well-lighted apartment, she hadn’t gotten a good look at me after I shot her in the head and pounded the daylights out of her with a stick. It’s very common for head injuries to screw up your short-term memory.

  That’s what I’ve read, anyway.

  In my own experience, I’ve always been able to remember every detail no matter where I got injured, in the head or otherwise.

  I wouldn’t have minded a little memory loss, here and there. Especially if I got to pick which memories to dump.

  Memories can be a real pain.

  While I was thinking about all this, I kept on sneaking through the woods. I’m not sure, though, whether I was looking for Judy or for a way out. I just kept moving along, trying not to get hurt again. I still couldn’t stand up straight or take a deep breath because of ramming into the branch.

  Every now and then, I imagined how it would feel to catch a branch that way in the middle of my face. That was almost enough to make me sit down and wait for dawn. But I kept moving, anyway.

  I needed to finish with Judy and get back to Serena and Charlie’s house before daylight.

  The lawn might have some Tony on it. The saber was still hidden in the bushes. I needed to do a whole slew of other chores, too, like make sure nobody would ever hear Tony’s voice on the answering machine, and burn his wallet and…

  Firelight!

  In the distance ahead of me and off to my left, I saw bushes and low-hanging tree branches that trembled with yellow-orange light.

  This is it! Has to be!

  I made my way slowly toward the glow, trying to be quiet.

  Let this be it! Let it be Judy!