The Nightmare People

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  She could see her house now. A little red car was sitting at the curb in front, one she didn’t remember ever seeing before – that was all she needed, for her parents to have some stupid guest there when she came in all dirty and sweaty and tired.

  Then she saw that someone was sitting in the driver’s seat, and an instant later the car’s engine started up.

  Well, that was a relief, anyway – she wouldn’t have to be polite to one of her parents’ friends. She shifted her backpack to her other shoulder and trudged on.

  The car was rolling now, but moving very slowly, just inching along, and hanging close to the curb. She stopped and watched it.

  The driver looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t place him. Someone from her Dad’s office, maybe?

  The car was coming closer, and she decided it was none of her business. She shrugged, and started walking again.

  The car pulled up to the curb and stopped, about twenty feet in front of her.

  She stopped.

  What was this, some sort of pervert trying to pick her up, or something? Or someone selling drugs?

  The driver leaned across and rolled down the window on the passenger side. Maggie stepped over toward the grass alongside the sidewalk, ready to head for cover if the guy tried anything funny. She glanced over and saw she was in front of the Goldsmiths’ house; she could run up and ring their doorbell if anything happened. Mrs. Goldsmith was pretty cool.

  “Maggie?” the guy called, stretching his head out the window.

  Oh, great, she thought, he knows my name! She didn’t say anything, just stood and watched.

  “Aren’t you Maggie Devanoy?” the stranger asked.

  “What if I am?” she called.

  “I’m Ed Smith,” he said, pulling himself halfway out the window of his car. “I live upstairs from the Goodwins. I’ve got to talk to you about Bill.”

  She eyed him warily.

  Yeah, that was where she’d seen him; he and Bill got along pretty well. He’d been teaching Bill some stuff about computers back in the spring. She’d seen him around the Goodwins’ apartment building maybe three or four times.

  “What about?” she called, not going any closer.

  “It’s hard to explain. Something’s happened to him. Look, have you seen him since Tuesday? Did he seem strange to you?”

  She shook her head. “I haven’t talked to him since Monday,” she said.

  “Well, isn’t that strange?” the man in the car asked. “I mean, it’s Friday evening, and you haven’t heard from him?”

  Her irritation got the better of her. “You’re goddamn right it is!” she told him. “We had a date for dinner tonight, and that bastard didn’t show up! He was supposed to pick me up after work!”

  Smith, if that was really his name, nodded. “I’m not surprised. Look, I really need to talk to you. I’ve got some things to tell you, but it’s going to be really hard to explain, and hard for you to believe. I don’t want to do it here, like this.”

  “You want me to get in the car with you?”

  “Or I could meet you someplace – someplace public, if you’re worried about me.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have a car. And I’m not about to walk back to the bus stop and wait – I’m not even sure there are any more buses tonight.”

  “Well, then climb in, and we can talk.”

  She didn’t say anything, just stared at him.

  “Yeah, I know, you don’t get in cars with strange men. Look,” he said. He paused, groped for something, found it, and picked it up.

  It was a crowbar, a blue-painted one with a U-shaped curve at one end. It looked brand-new; in fact, she thought she could still see a price sticker on one end.

  He held it out to her.

  “Look, you can take this, and just hang onto it, and if I try anything, hit me with it. I really need to just talk to you.”

  She looked at the crowbar, stepped cautiously toward it, then stopped.

  She’d never heard of a rapist or pervert giving his victim a weapon like that, but what if he had an even better weapon, like a gun? “Oh, what the hell,” she said. She walked over and gingerly took the crowbar from him.

  It weighed at least a couple of pounds, she thought, hefting it, and the curved end would hit really hard. At close range, it would have to be just about as dangerous as a gun – easier to use, harder to miss with.

  “Okay,” she said.

  He smiled, and opened the door, and she got in, the crowbar ready in her hand.

  3.

  “Is it all right if we drive? I’d rather not just sit here.”

  She shifted her grip on the crowbar as she glanced around. It was a nice little vehicle, reasonably clean, but with a pile of stuff in the back seat that looked like computer equipment. The air conditioning was running, which was nice; she was in no particular hurry to get out into the heat again. “It’s your car,” she said. “Just so you drop me at home when you’re through.”

  “Fine.” He let the car go forward.

  “So what is it you wanted to tell me about Bill?”

  He glanced at her, but then turned his eyes back to the road.

  “Did you hear about what happened at the Bedford Mills Apartments on Wednesday morning?” he asked.

  “There was something in the paper yesterday about a bomb scare – is that what you mean?”

  He nodded. “Except that wasn’t what it was.” He turned a corner, then continued, “On Wednesday morning, every single person in that whole complex, except me, was missing. The place was empty. Wednesday afternoon, they all turned up in the basement of that unfinished office building across the back lot, with a story about a bomb scare chasing them out.”

  “What about you?” Maggie asked, watching him closely and holding the crowbar. “Why were you the only one who wasn’t missing?”

  “Because I slept right through it all. I was up until three a.m. because my air conditioner had broken down, and I couldn’t sleep, and then I slept right through until almost noon, and I missed the excitement, whatever it was.”

  “Bill was missing, too?” Maggie asked.

  Smith nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Bill, and his parents, and Jessie and Harry and Sid, all of them were missing.”

  She blinked. Why on Earth hadn’t Bill called her afterwards, to talk about it? That was an adventure, something he would have shared with her!

  She’d seen the item in the Journal, but it hadn’t occurred to her that the Goodwins were involved; the article hadn’t mentioned names, or said that it was everyone in the complex, only that “over a hundred residents” were involved.

  “That’s the official story,” Smith said, after giving her a moment to think. She looked at him and listened closely.

  “What really happened…” he began. “Well, I don’t know exactly, but I know that the people who came back afterwards weren’t the same ones who had lived there before.”

  “What do you mean, they weren’t the same ones?” she asked, staring at him.

  Then he told her about Mrs. Malinoff’s knee, and her eyes, and the bloodstains he’d found in the basement, bloodstains that had been painted over by the time the cops got there – he didn’t mention the bones, or the apparitions at his windows, or go into any detail about the blood. He told her about his phone being answered when he wasn’t there.

  And he told her about peeling a piece of skin off “Bill Goodwin’s” back, and what he had seen underneath, and he fished a little scrap of something, like a milky piece of burst balloon, out of his pocket and held it out to her.

  “Eew, gross!” she said, not touching it.

  He smiled a tight little smile, and put the scrap on the dashboard. Maggie stared at it, but still refused to touch it.

  “That all sounds crazy,” she said.

  She immediately regretted it; what if he was crazy? What if he attacked her? Sure, she had the crowbar, but she didn’t want to have to use it. She wasn’t sure she could
use it.

  She saw a glitter in his eye for a second, and lifted the crowbar.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” he said. “Why do you think I haven’t gone to the police with it?” He glanced at her.

  She nodded. “I guess,” she agreed. “It’s like something out of a horror movie, y’know?”

  “Yeah, I know,” he agreed. “I wouldn’t believe it myself if I didn’t have to. I tried very hard not to believe it. There were a couple of things I haven’t told you about, because if I did I’d sound even crazier, but I saw them, and felt them, and there’s that piece of skin there, and I sure as hell didn’t imagine that! Even if you won’t touch it, you can see it, right? And it’s really a piece of skin?”

  He stopped the car at a corner and looked at her with an odd expression on his face, and Maggie realized that he wasn’t really sure at all. If she told him it wasn’t skin, he’d believe her; he’d think he was nuts.

  That might be the best thing all around. She could pretend she’d never seen him, and forget the whole thing.

  But it really was a piece of skin, or at least something that looked like one.

  “I guess it is,” she said. “I mean, I’ve never… you don’t… I mean, I guess so.”

  He nodded. “Good enough.” He pulled out into traffic, turning east.

  “Look, you don’t have to believe me,” he said a moment later. “Go visit Bill. You’ve been dating all summer, right? At least that long; I’ve seen you around a lot. You must know him pretty well by now. Whatever it is that’s wearing his skin, you ought to be able to tell it’s not him. I mean, has he been acting like Bill, this week, not calling you, even after all the excitement? Forgetting your date tonight? It’s because the thing that took his place doesn’t know everything Bill knew; it doesn’t know he had a date tonight. You’ll see.”

  Maggie didn’t particularly want to see, but she didn’t say that. Instead, she asked, “Is that where we’re going? Bill’s apartment?”

  Smith glanced out his side window at the gathering dusk. “Nope. Not at this time of day, we’re not.”

  She looked out her own window; the sun was down, and the sky darkening slowly. “Why?” she asked.

  “Because I think they’re more active at night.”

  “You think what are more active at night?”

  “The nightmare people, the things that ate my neighbors.”

  She considered that for a long moment of silence as they cruised smoothly along Route 124. Her empty stomach knotted at the idea.

  “You really think they ate them?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I can’t prove it,” he said, “But yes, I think they did.”

  She grimaced. “Eew,” she said again.

  He smiled. It was not a happy smile, nor a pleasant one.

  “So what do we do now?” she asked.

  “Well,” he said, “I intend to fight these things, whatever they are, even if I can’t go to the police. I’m looking for people to help me, people who knew my neighbors and who’ll have a reason to want revenge. And also, people who will be able to tell that these things aren’t the people they’re pretending to be. Except I don’t know anyone like that. I didn’t live there that long, and you know how people are in apartments – you never get to know your neighbors, not really. The only person I knew at all who might help was you, because I’d seen you and Bill together, and he told me your name and that you lived around here, so I was able to look your folks up in the phone book and come wait for you.”

  She considered that, and replied, hesitantly, “I don’t know about this. I mean, I’m not sure what you’re after, and I don’t think I want to do it. I’m no fearless vampire killer or anything.”

  “They aren’t vampires,” he said. “At least, I don’t think they are.”

  “Then it’s even worse, isn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, with a vampire, you know he can’t come out in the daylight, and they’re scared of crosses, and garlic, and you kill them with a stake through the heart – but what do you do with these things, whatever they are? Where’d they come from, anyway?”

  “I don’t know, damn it!” Smith snapped. He calmed down almost instantly, and continued, “I wish I did. And I know you’re not Rambo or anything, hell, you said you can’t even drive yet, but you’re all I’ve got. You’ve got to help me, even if it’s just by telling me where I can find other people who’ll believe me.”

  “But I’m not sure I believe you!” she shouted.

  “I know,” Smith said, nodding. “You will, though, when you talk to Bill Goodwin, or look at the back of his neck.” He pointed at the skin fragment. “You’ll see where this piece came from – if it hasn’t healed up or something.”

  Maggie tried not to yell as she replied, “Look, even if I do believe you, why should I help?”

  “Because,” Smith said, snatching up the skin and shaking it at her, “That thing ate Bill Goodwin! It ate the boy you’ve been dating all summer!”

  That was too much for her. Her gorge rose.

  “Stop the car!” she said, desperately.

  He looked at her, startled, “Oh, hey, you don’t have to get out here, I’ll drive you home…”

  “No, that’s not it. Stop the car!”

  Puzzled, he pulled over onto the shoulder, and she got the door open and leaned out just in time to vomit onto asphalt instead of upholstery.

  Smith watched helplessly from the driver’s seat, and noted wryly that she never loosened her grip on the crowbar.

  At least, she thought as she wiped her mouth with a rag from the glove compartment, at least she wasn’t hungry any more; missed dinner or no, she wasn’t the least interested in eating anything for quite some time.

  When she was done, and sure that nothing more would come up, she leaned back and closed the door.

  “Take me home,” she said.

  Smith started the car rolling.

  “What about…” he began.

  “Tomorrow morning,” she said, “I’m going over to Bill’s apartment, and I’m going to talk to him, and if you’re right, I’m going to go home again and call you up.” She paused, then added, “And if this is all some kind of a sick, nasty joke, then I swear I’m going to report you to the cops, you son of a bitch, and tell them you tried to rape me.”

  “It’s not a joke,” he said.

  “Then you’ll hear from me in the morning. Where can I call you?”

  He told her.

  Then he took her home.

  Shortly after ten o’clock on Saturday morning, he was awakened by her call.

  He had his first recruit.

  4.

  He met his second recruit when he came by to pick Maggie up for a lunchtime strategy session.

  He had only gotten four hours’ sleep that morning, after a long night spent playing with the Kaypro laptop in his motel room, but he tried not to let that bother him.

  On two separate occasions during the night he had glimpsed something looking in the window at him, a familiar and inhuman face that vanished as soon as he looked up, but he tried not to let that bother him, either.

  He was not at his best, however, when he drove up to the Devanoy house on Amber Crescent and found not one, but two people waiting for him on the front porch there. One was Maggie, tall and brown-haired and gangly, and the other one he didn’t know, a boy of sixteen or seventeen, with curly black hair and a pale, round face, an inch or two shorter than Maggie.

  “Who’s this?” he asked as he got out of the car.

  “Mr. Smith,” Maggie said, “This is Elias Samaan. He lives up the street, and he was a friend of Bill’s, from school.”

  Elias started to hold out his hand, then nervously changed his mind. “Pleased to meet you,” he said.

  Smith nodded. “Pleased to meet you, too,” he said. He looked at Maggie.

  She shrugged.

  Elias said, “I was over at Bill’s place this morning, and Maggie told me about the vampires, and he’s change
d, all right.”

  Smith frowned. This did not sound encouraging, somehow. “I don’t think they’re vampires,” he said. “I… well, I don’t think that’s what they are.”

  “Sure they are!” Elias insisted. “They aren’t like in the movies, but these things must be what the original legends are based on!”

  Smith shrugged. “Maybe you’re right,” he said. “This probably isn’t the best place to discuss it, though.”

  “Oh, right, I guess,” Elias said. “So what did you have in mind? Where are you working from?”

  Smith blinked. “Working from? I’m staying at a motel, if that’s what you mean.”

  Elias looked disapproving. “That’s no good. We need somewhere they can’t spy on us.”

  “Elias says he knows all about this stuff,” Maggie interjected.

  Smith did not like the sound of that at all. “What stuff?” he said.

  “Vampires,” Elias explained. “And monsters.”

  Smith glanced about, suddenly wondering if he had made some terrible mistake, then turned back to Elias and Maggie.

  “Look,” he said in a low voice, almost a whisper, “These aren’t some kind of horror-movie vampires that sleep in coffins. This isn’t a game, either – it’s not Dungeons Dragons. This is real. But it’s not something I want to talk about here where Maggie’s folks might be listening, or the neighbors, or other people. I’m not worried about the creatures bothering us here, or spying on us, but I am worried about getting us all in trouble with the everyday authorities – you two with your parents, me with the cops. Not to mention that it’s hot out here. Now, can we go somewhere a bit more private than a goddamn front porch?”

  Maggie glanced nervously at the door, and Elias looked abashed. “Right,” Elias said.

  “Should we get in the car?” Maggie asked.

  “I think that would be a good idea, yes,” Smith said. He brought up the rear as the three of them trooped down the front walk.

  Elias climbed into the back, and Maggie took the passenger seat. “Kind of cramped back here,” Elias remarked.