The Nightmare People

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  She sat silent the rest of the way home.

  7.

  “You want me to drop you at McGowan’s place?” Sandy asked.

  “Yes, please,” Khalil said, nodding slightly.

  “You got a car there?”

  “Yes.”

  Sandy glanced at his passenger, then returned his attention to the road. “Not real talkative, are you?”

  Khalil didn’t answer that.

  “Thanks for helping,” Sandy said. “It didn’t do any good, but you did real well. Thanks.”

  For a moment Khalil didn’t reply. Then he asked, “How is your hand?”

  Sandy glanced at him, startled. “It’s okay, I think.” He took it off the wheel and flexed it. “It still hurts, but I don’t think it’s bleeding any more, and it’s not stiffening up too much.” He didn’t mention that both his palms stung from the loss of skin he had suffered when Khalil had hammered down the stake while he was holding it.

  Khalil nodded. “You should get a better bandage. And you should go see a doctor.”

  “Yeah,” Sandy agreed, “You’re right. It could get infected or something.”

  He turned the corner onto Topaz Court.

  “We must find a way to kill them,” Khalil said.

  “Yeah,” Sandy agreed, “But what? Smith shot one, we drove a stake through one’s heart, you hit it with a fuckin’ axe, and it didn’t even care. What the hell else is there?”

  Khalil considered that for a long moment, and Sandy pulled up into the driveway at 706.

  “Perhaps fire?” Khalil suggested, as he opened his door. “They say that fire purifies, no?”

  Sandy stared at him. “That’s a great idea,” he said.

  Khalil shrugged. “It’s nothing.”

  Sandy smiled. “No, it’s great. Yeah, burn them – like witches.” A thought struck him. “Hey!” he said, “Where can I get hold of you?”

  Khalil paused. “Oh?”

  “Where can I get hold of you?” Sandy repeated. “We need to stick together, you and me and the others who know about those things.”

  “Ah,” Khalil said. He fished a wallet out of his pocket and pulled out an old newspaper clipping. “You have a pen?”

  Sandy found one in the glove compartment, and tore a piece off a 1973 map of New York State to write down his own phone number.

  They solemnly exchanged notes and pocketed them.

  Then Khalil crossed to his own car, an ’84 Pontiac, got in and started the engine, while Sandy pulled back out into the street.

  He drove away, heading back to his borrowed apartment, while Khalil made a three-point turn in the street.

  At the corner of Barrett Road Khalil glimpsed Sandy’s black Mercury far off to the right, but his own route home took him in the other direction.

  He turned left and drove home.

  8.

  Amber Crescent is near the southeastern corner of Diamond Park, Maryland. It runs west from Southfield Road, then turns south, then turns west again, and ends in a circle. In the center of the circle is a grassy area, and along one side of the grass stands a row of four Bradford pear trees. Forty-two houses, on quarter-acre lots, line the street, comfortable, moderate-sized houses built in the mid-1970s. The Devanoy family lived at 19036, on the south side just before the circle.

  The Samaan family lived at 19017 Amber Crescent.

  Hanna Samaan began worrying when her son Elias wasn’t home for Sunday dinner, but he’d missed dinner before, so she didn’t say anything to her husband. He was nursing a hangover, and in no mood to be bothered with such things.

  Joe Samaan went to bed early, in hopes of feeling better by the time he had to leave for work in the morning. He hadn’t really noticed Elias’s absence.

  Hanna sat up and waited.

  It was almost midnight when the front door opened quietly, and she saw Elias’s familiar face peer in.

  “Mom?” he said, “What are you still doing up?” His voice was oddly high-pitched – in fact, it sounded more like a woman’s voice. She’d thought he was well past that stage, and settled in with an adult tenor, but she guessed she’d been wrong – or maybe he’d been drinking or something.

  “Waiting for you,” she snapped.

  “You didn’t have to do that!” Something was definitely peculiar about his voice.

  “Well, I did it,” she pointed out. “It’s about time you got home! I was worried!”

  “Hey, I’m fine,” Elias said. “Oh, and I brought some friends with me – they’d just like to come in for a bite.”

  Hanna wavered, thinking she really should order these friends, whoever they were, out – Elias had no business bringing anyone in at this hour! “One of them’s Bill Goodwin,” Elias said. “I don’t think you’ve met the other.”

  Hanna knew Bill Goodwin, and considered him a good friend for her son to have. He was polite and helpful and showed no signs of drug use or thuggery, even if he did like that awful heavy metal music and spend an awful lot of time working on his car. She gave in.

  “All right,” she said, “Bring them in.”

  Elias stepped in. His clothes were a mess, dirty and even torn in places, she noticed, and she wondered what on Earth he’d been up to.

  Not just dirty, filthy; and was that a bloodstain on his shirt?

  Behind Elias, Bill Goodwin leaned around the door. “Hi, Mrs. Samaan!” he called.

  Then the third one came in, the one in the slouch hat.

  She stared at him, astonished.

  “Hallowe’en isn’t for months yet!” she said.

  Elias and Bill exchanged glances, smiling tight-lipped little smiles, smiles that could be called smirks. She noticed that Bill had a bandage on his neck, a rather large one, and his color wasn’t good. She blinked. Had the boys been up to something? That third one in the fright mask and the silly hat – she didn’t like it.

  It was a very good mask, too. It looked almost real.

  “Mrs. Samaan,” Bill said, stepping forward, “It’s great to see you, it really is.”

  He smiled. “Let me give you a kiss.”

  Chapter Seven:

  Monday, August 7th

  1.

  Bright and early Monday morning, Annie McGowan called up the Montgomery County police, and explained to the desk sergeant who took her call that someone had taken her sister-in-law’s place, and was living in Kate’s apartment, pretending to be Kate.

  Yes, it looked like Kate, Annie agreed, but there was no doubt at all – it was not Kate. The imposter couldn’t knit, didn’t recognize a word of the little secret language the two of them used to have, didn’t remember anything about Kate’s dead brother, Annie’s husband – not even his name.

  The sergeant referred her to a lieutenant, who, upon hearing the addresses involved, transferred her to a Lieutenant Buckley, who listened to the entire story without comment.

  When she had finished, he sighed. “Mrs. McGowan,” he said, “I’ll tell you honestly, it sounds to me like your sister might have had a stroke or something, or maybe she’s got Alzheimer’s – isn’t that more likely than an imposter taking her place?”

  “Likely or not, that thing’s not Kate,” Annie insisted.

  “That thing? Come on, now, Mrs. McGowan!”

  Annie realized her mistake; she would never convince anyone over the phone that the imposter wasn’t even human. “I’m sorry,” she said, “It’s just so upsetting to have someone there pretending to be her, when it isn’t really her at all!”

  The lieutenant made a vague noise that might have indicated sympathetic agreement – or might have indicated only that he didn’t want to think about this nonsense. “I’m sure it is, Mrs. McGowan. Listen, I’ll send out one of my officers and a police psychiatrist, and you can go along with them to talk to your sister-in-law, and we’ll see if we can’t get this all straightened out.”

  “A psychiatrist?” she asked doubtfully. Did this lieutenant think she was crazy? “Certainly,” Buckley
said. “You don’t think that someone who would try to take your sister’s place is completely normal, do you?”

  Slightly relieved, Annie had to concede that he had a point. She had been thinking the psychiatrist was intended to keep an eye on her, not on the false Kate.

  Of course, in point of fact, she guessed that the psychiatrist would be watching both of them. The police didn’t know anything about her, and really, it was reasonable enough to doubt her story. “All right,” she said, “When should I expect them?”

  There was a pause, and she could almost see the lieutenant glancing at a clock somewhere. “About ten-thirty, I’d say,” came the reply. “Does that suit you?”

  “That would be fine, yes. Thank you very much.”

  She hung up, and looked around the room.

  Perhaps those men at the meeting had been right, perhaps the police weren’t going to help – but surely, if she just gave the police a chance to see what had happened…

  Surely they would see.

  2.

  Smith had slept from six until nine; he intended to be at work by ten, so he couldn’t really allow himself any more. Einar didn’t mind if he kept flexible hours, as long as they weren’t too far out of step, and as long as the programs he wrote did what they were supposed to and came in before deadline. Even so, Smith didn’t think anything later than ten would be a good idea.

  An odd thing that was bothering Smith slightly was that for the first time since leaving his apartment he had gone an entire night without even the faintest suspicion of a glimpse of a nightmare person. Every other night, even if he hadn’t gotten a clear look at one, he had felt them out there, watching him – and he had usually gotten at least one clear look. The exact number and personnel had varied somewhat; he had seen Nora Hagarty and Walt Harris and Bill Goodwin once each, and of course that one that didn’t have a disguise yet, the one that always wore a slouch hat and had Smith’s own voice, had been there every time.

  It had come looking for him every other night – but not last night.

  Smith had sat up waiting for it, as he had the last few nights, but it had never come. He had spent the night watching TV, playing with his computer, thinking over the long, horrible day that had just ended, and the monster had never come.

  Did Elias’s death have something to do with it, perhaps? It had been a different monster that had killed the boy, not the one that was after Smith, but perhaps there was some connection.

  Smith couldn’t see what the connection would be, but perhaps there was one.

  At nine-thirty in the morning, though, he wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that. He was supposed to be getting to work and thinking about the program he was finishing up.

  He had managed to shave and shower and dress, but when he got in his car and pulled out of the lot he found himself heading toward Diamond Park without consciously intending it.

  That was the wrong direction.

  Making a U-turn on Clopper Road at rush hour – even the tail end of rush hour – was completely impossible; he turned onto Firstfield Road, then around the corner onto Bank Street and through the Quince Orchard Plaza shopping center from end to end, then back onto Clopper, heading the right way this time.

  The sky was clouding up; it looked very much as if it was about to start raining. Everything looked so normal – the construction work, the cars, the grass and the sound barriers on either side of the highway, all just as they had been a week ago, before anything strange had begun to happen. He was in his own car, on his way to work, just like any other Monday.

  Just like any other Monday – except that he had only had three hours sleep.

  Just like any other Monday – except that he had seen a boy horribly killed by a monster the day before, right before his eyes.

  The first drops of rain spattered the windshield, and as he reached for the wiper button he realized that his hands were shaking.

  3.

  The officer glanced at Mrs. McGowan, who was shaking off her umbrella, and then rang the bell. The psychiatrist stood back a pace or two, watching.

  “Who is it?” called a cheerful voice from inside.

  “It’s me, Annie,” Mrs. McGowan called, furling the umbrella.

  The door opened, and a startled little face appeared. “Annie?” Then she noticed the others. “Who’s this?” she asked.

  “This is Officer Nilson,” Annie said. “And that’s Dr. Dodge. Could we come in and talk to you?”

  “Oh, is it about those terrorists that said they planted a bomb last week?” the false Kate asked anxiously. Then her face cleared. “Oh, no, it couldn’t be, Annie, because you didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “Could we come in?” Annie repeated.

  “Ma’am,” Officer Nilson said, “May we, please? We’d just like to talk to you. Nobody’s done anything wrong.”

  Annie threw him a glance of outrage at this lie, since someone certainly had done something wrong in replacing Kate with this fraud, but then she covered her anger and smiled. “May we, Katie?”

  “Certainly, if you like,” the imposter said, swinging the door wide and smiling in return, her head tipped to one side just as the real Kate’s always was when she smiled.

  Annie stifled her revulsion. The real Kate would have seen how upset she was and wouldn’t have smiled like that.

  She studied the creature closely as the four of them settled into Kate’s living room. Dr. Dodge sat on the couch; Annie and the monster took the flowered armchairs, and Officer Nilson, rather than taking the other end of the couch, brought a straight chair over from the dining area.

  Annie approved of that action; it seemed more businesslike. She wasn’t quite sure why it seemed more businesslike, but all the same, she was glad that Officer Nilson had done it.

  Nilson, on the other hand, knew exactly why he had settled on the hard chair. He was well aware that if either of these dotty old women were to go berserk he would need to stand up in a hurry and grab her before she could do any damage, and it was much easier to get up quickly from a solid wood seat than from the depths of an overstuffed sofa.

  Old women might look harmless, but he knew better. Anybody could turn violent, and even the feeblest cripple could do some damage if not stopped. Every cop knew that.

  And these two might both be in their sixties, but they both looked pretty healthy. He watched both women closely.

  The big one’s story that the other was an imposter sounded crazy, but you could never be absolutely sure. It was far more likely that one of the pair had slipped a cam somewhere – or maybe both of them had – but the possibility that their hostess really wasn’t Kate McGowan had to be kept in mind, as well.

  “Can I get you anything?” Kate – or whoever it was – asked. “I have some ginger ale in the fridge, or I can have the kettle hot in a few minutes if you’d like tea or instant coffee.”

  “That’s all right, ma’am, we’re fine,” Nilson replied, watching the nervously-fluttering hands.

  “Well then,” she asked, her gaze turning nervously to Dr. Dodge, and then back to Nilson, “What can I do for you?”

  Nilson glanced at Dr. Dodge, who made a small waving gesture, urging him to proceed.

  “Well, ma’am,” Nilson said, “Your sister-in-law was worried about you. There have been some peculiar incidents here recently, like that bomb scare…”

  “Oh, yes, wasn’t that ridiculous?” Kate tittered. “All of us down there in our nightclothes, waiting for the building to blow up!”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Nilson was watching Annie McGowan rather more closely than he was watching Kate. Kate seemed a little discomfited by the presence of unexpected guests, probably especially because they were police, and maybe even more so because one of them was black, which still made a difference to a lot of people, especially older ones – Dr. Dodge knew that, which was probably why he was letting Nilson do all the talking. Or maybe Dodge was just keeping up his role as impartial psychiatric observer
, rather than thinking about his race.

  Whatever the reasons, Kate appeared discomfited, but only discomfited, nothing more than that. Annie, on the other hand, looked as if she were smothering an outburst of some kind and were almost ready to explode.

  Nilson continued, “Anyway, your sister-in-law was worried about you, living here, so we came to talk to you to ask if you knew of anything else strange, anything that’s gone wrong lately, or seemed peculiar or out of place.”

  Kate looked utterly mystified. “No,” she said, “No, there’s nothing I can think of.” She turned to her sister-in-law and asked, “Annie, are you feeling well?”

  Annie gasped at the sheer audacity of the thing. “Am I feeling well?” she asked. “Me? You’re the one who’s forgotten how to knit, which you’ve known since you were a girl! You’re the one pretending to be Katie, when you aren’t anything like her, really, you’re just acting the part. Officer, I’ll show you – she’s wearing my sister’s skin, that’s not…”

  Annie was up and moving toward the Kate thing before she even knew it, intending to tear that stolen face right off her, but Officer Nilson was up as well, blocking her, and his hands were on her arms, the thumbs digging solidly into the insides of her elbows as he forced her back a step.

  “Take it easy,” he said gently. “Take it easy, Mrs. McGowan.”

  Dr. Dodge was there, too, standing behind her, listening.

  “Take it easy!” Annie snapped, “Take it easy? That’s not Kate! It’s not even human!”

  “Annie, are you all right?” the thing asked, and the voice was just like Kate’s, but when she looked into its eyes she saw no honest concern, she saw mockery, and a hint of warm red that shouldn’t be there.

  Annie didn’t fight against Officer Nilson. She was outmatched. The police believed the creature, instead of her.

  Mr. Smith and the others had been right. She forced herself to appear calm, forced her muscles to relax.