There were no true toes, just curving black claws, shaped to hold the skin out in its original form. There was no bone in the heel, no true tendon at the back of the ankle, just stuff that was something like clay, something like rubber.
She retrieved the nail file from the sink and rammed it into the thing’s arch.
It shouted, “Let me out of here, bitch!” It sounded frightened, angry – but no longer in pain.
Biting had hurt it; stabbing had not. Just as Ed Smith had said. She nodded.
Then she got up and stood at the door, listening.
The hallway outside was completely silent.
Carefully, slowly, she drew the bolt and opened the door a crack and peered out.
The hallway was empty.
She stepped out, checked carefully both ways, and made her way, step by step, downstairs. The front door was open, and she saw no sign of the other two nightmare people.
She closed the door and hurried to the kitchen, where she fished a good, strong carving knife from the drawer by the stove.
Thus armed, she searched the whole house, top to bottom.
They were really gone.
Maybe her bluffing about booby-traps and razors had helped, but it had been the sound of their companion’s pain that had sent them fleeing. Cowards!
Well, she told herself, they were gone now.
Except, of course, for the one that had ruined her shower curtain, the one that lay squirming in the bathtub, shouting obscenities at her.
She had that one.
She had wanted a chance at one of them, had wanted her share of revenge. Providing a base for the men, cooking their meals and keeping watch by day, that was all very well, and undoubtedly helped the war effort, so to speak, but she had wanted a chance at one herself, all the same.
She had hoped for the one that had gotten Kate, but this one would do.
Knife in hand, she went back into the bathroom.
Chapter Twelve:
After the Fire
1.
When Khalil turned off the engine they both heard it – something was wailing.
The two men looked at each other. Then Smith opened his door.
“Come on,” he said, swinging his crutches out.
Khalil climbed out, and led the way up to the porch. They moved slowly, step by step, sweeping the lawn and shrubbery with Smith’s flashlight.
Everything seemed peaceful – except that inside the house something was screaming and weeping wildly.
And all the downstairs lights were on, even though it was well after one in the morning.
The noise didn’t seem human – but then, it probably wasn’t.
“Damn, I wonder what the neighbors think!” Smith muttered, as he awkwardly tried to mount the porch steps. He had had little practice using crutches; it had been a long, long time since he’d broken any bones, and he had never before done anything like burning his foot this badly.
Khalil rang the bell.
“Who is it?” Annie’s voice called a moment later.
“It is Khalil Saad,” he answered.
“Oh,” Annie called, “I wonder, could you come to the front window and draw a little blood, please?”
Up until now, the standard procedure had been to open the front door and draw a few drops of blood there. Nobody had thought it was necessary to keep the door closed and use the window.
That didn’t mean it was a bad idea. Khalil looked at Smith, who tried to shrug and almost fell. They both made their way to the window.
Smith leaned on one crutch while he fished out his switchblade, then jabbed his left little finger and held it up where Annie could see it. It seemed a little stupid to be deliberately wounding himself like this when he was practically held together with bandages already, but he obliged his hostess.
Annie smiled at the sight of his blood, then looked expectantly at Khalil.
Khalil took the knife from Smith and pricked his own finger, reopening a wound he had already used several times.
Annie nodded. “Be right there!” she called through the glass.
A moment later the door opened, admitting them.
As they stepped inside Annie started to say something about the crutches, and Smith started to ask about the now-clearly-audible screaming, but Khalil cut them both off.
“Mrs. McGowan,” he said, “If you would please?” He held out the switchblade.
Annie grimaced, but she took the knife and stuck herself, piercing the scab on one finger.
Blood flowed redly.
She handed Smith the knife; he accepted it and put it back in his pocket, and all three of them relaxed.
“Annie,” Smith asked, as he closed the front door, “What’s the noise?”
“Oh, let me show you!” she said, clearly proud of herself. “It’s upstairs.”
Smith was in no condition for climbing stairs. After several attempts, Khalil assisted him up the stairs, leaving the crutches in the foyer.
2.
Khalil and Smith stared down at the thing in the tub, Smith leaning heavily on Khalil’s shoulder.
The creature’s chest was sunken in, leaving a cavity roughly the size and shape of a football. Its T-shirt had been cut open and folded back, and the human skin beneath had been stripped off. Its feet, too, were bare of both shoes and skin.
The rest of it was wrapped in the shredded remains of a thick green plastic shower curtain, bound up tightly with loops and loops of picture wire around the legs, neck, and shoulders. Elsewhere, long strips of white adhesive tape and tan package tape criss-crossed the plastic. Its arms were bound behind it – underneath it, now. Fluffy green towels were wrapped around its head and stuffed in its mouth.
The green wrapping made it look something like a gigantic ear of corn, still in the husk, with the towels forming the stem – but the grey feet didn’t look much like tassels, and the grey chest didn’t fit. It was as if the ear inside the husk had rotted away from within.
Except that rotted or not, it was moving. It twitched, and tossed its head from side to side, and it kept up an amazingly loud high-pitched moaning, despite the gag, that set Smith’s teeth on edge.
“It had your voice, Mr. Smith,” Annie said, smiling proudly. “I suppose it’s the one that was after you originally.”
Smith glanced at her, startled.
“Really?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Annie said, nodding. “That’s how it got in. It had your voice.”
“What did…” Smith began. He stopped, and asked, “You cut out that black thing, the heart?”
“That’s right.”
“But you didn’t eat it?” he persisted.
“Not yet,” Annie admitted. “I just couldn’t. Not raw, not all slimy the way it was.”
“But… where is it, then?” Smith asked.
Annie said, “Down in the kitchen.”
He turned back to the tub. “And it’s still alive?”
Annie nodded. “Has been for hours,” she said.
Smith shuddered; he felt suddenly queasy.
“Has it been screaming the whole time?” he asked.
“Oh, no, not really,” Annie told him. “Just sometimes. It’s not happy, of course, but it hasn’t screamed the whole time.”
Smith nodded. “I see,” he said uneasily. He reached down and pulled the towels away from its face.
It looked up at him from red, inhuman eyes. The skin on its face hung in tatters.
“You!” it said, in a hoarse imitation of Smith’s own voice.
Smith nodded. “Yup, me,” he agreed.
“You,” it said, “I came here for you.”
“I thought you might,” Smith said, “But I wasn’t expecting it to be tonight.”
It made an indescribable noise.
“You left us a note at the Samaans’ house,” Smith said.
It nodded, wary.
“You said something about itching?”
“Yes,” it said, “The skin
s itch. They… we’re grown to fit. Each of us grows to fit a particular skin, and any other skin will itch, always. It’s horrible.”
Smith blinked. “But the skins wear out,” he said.
The thing nodded. “I know,” it said.
“But that means that eventually, you’ll all be wearing itchy, wrong skins.”
“I know,” it said.
Smith shook his head. “Bad design,” he said.
The thing jerked about, but said nothing.
“You know,” Smith said, “I think that there’s a lot of bad design in you things. The way you breed, where it takes two weeks and it can be aborted with a stomach pump if you catch it early enough, that’s not really very efficient. And you’re dependent on your stolen skins for a lot, and you aren’t any stronger than some of your prey – you rely a lot on surprise and ignorance, don’t you?”
The creature blinked up at him.
“I know you can slip through narrow places, and change your shape somewhat, but it’s not easy, is it? I mean, you can’t just melt down and slide away under a door.”
“Not…” the thing said, then hesitated.
“Go on,” Smith said, “What good do you think it’s going to do to hold back? We’ve got your heart down in the kitchen – or is it so much a heart as the larva you grew from?”
The thing managed to shrug at that. “Name’s not important,” it said.
“You were saying, about shape-changing?”
“Only… can’t do it in sunlight. And can’t do it if we know someone’s watching.”
Smith smiled. “That’s why you couldn’t get through my window that first night, because I was watching you? Shit, that’s as stupid as vampires and garlic.”
The nightmare just stared up at him.
Smith bent down a little farther.
“You know,” he said, “One of you told me that you’re supposed to be the next step for supernatural evil, the predator that can finally wipe out humanity. I think that’s bull. I think you’re an evolutionary dead end, just like vampires – except I’d bet my shirt you guys aren’t going to last any three hundred years.”
He straightened up and turned away.
“Come on,” he said, gesturing to Khalil and Annie, “Let’s go.”
As Smith worked his way back downstairs, one step at a time, he asked Annie, “What did you do with its heart?”
“Oh,” she said, “Well, I told you, I couldn’t face eating it raw, so I saut?ed it with butter and mushrooms and onions. I was just starting on it when you two got here – that was what got the screaming started again. Would you two care to join me?”
Smith gagged and almost lost his balance.
“Saut?ed?” he asked.
Annie nodded.
Smith was appalled by the thought – but when Annie served out the portions he suppressed his reservations and ate his share.
He had to admit that although it still tasted horrible, it was better than eating them raw.
3.
“You know we didn’t get them all,” Buckley said angrily, “And we probably never will, now. That was a damn fool stunt, blowing up the place like that. Sure, it messed them up, and we got a lot of them in the confusion, and we probably mostly kept them from breeding this month, but now we don’t know where the hell they all are!” He glared at Smith.
“We didn’t know all of them anyway,” Smith pointed out, sitting stiffly so as not to aggravate any injuries. “They were already slipping away, one or two at a time.”
“I know,” Buckley said, “But now they’re all gone!”
“How many got away?” Smith asked.
Buckley shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Not counting larvae – and we have no idea how many of those are out there – my best count is that about forty, maybe forty-five are unaccounted for.”
“Less than a third of what they started with,” Smith pointed out.
“Yeah, but dammit, I still should run you in,” Buckley said. “That was the messiest piece of arson I’ve ever seen in my life!”
Smith shrugged, and grimaced as the movement pulled at a scab. “I’m an amateur,” he said. “What can I say?”
Buckley made a disgusted gesture and stopped talking.
“What are we going to do now?” Maddie Newell asked. She and her sister and Dr. Frauenthal had called up, wanting to talk to Smith about the nightmare people, and when, in the course of the discussion, they had learned about the meeting that Buckley had demanded they had invited themselves along.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Smith said, “But I think I’ve done my share. I’ve eaten God knows how many of those things – I’ve probably got an ulcer from them, and my digestion’s never going to be the same. I’ve been cut and burned and beaten, I’ve lost my job – I’ve had it. I’m leaving. I’m going to get out while I still have enough money for the fare, and I’m going somewhere a long way away from here – Boston or California or somewhere, where I can find work.”
Khalil shifted. “I am leaving, too,” he said. “This area is not good for me any more.”
George Brayton, seated on the far side of the room, nodded in agreement. Smith had called him that morning and asked him to come over and join the party. With Buckley and the Newells coming, it had seemed like a good idea to get as many of the people who knew about the monsters as possible.
“But there are still some of those things out there!” Alice Newell shouted.
Smith shrugged. “Not my problem,” he said. “Look around, will you?” He waved an arm to take in everyone in the crowded room. The Newell girls and Maggie Devanoy sat on the couch; Khalil and Lieutenant Buckley stood in either side of the archway to the dining room. Dr. Frauenthal leaned against one arm of the chair George sat in. Annie McGowan, as hostess, stood anxiously to one side, watching in case her guests needed anything. “You all know about them,” Smith said. “You all know how to kill them, what they can do – it’s not my problem any more.”
“Mr. Smith,” Dr. Frauenthal said, “After what I’ve heard, and having patched you back together the night before last, I can’t deny you’ve done your part, but how are we supposed to find them all and kill them? They could be anywhere by now. And we can’t tell anybody – they won’t believe us.”
“Show ’em the one in your bottle,” Smith suggested.
“I can’t,” Frauenthal said. “It died, once the moon was past full and it had no host, and it rotted away to nothing, same as the adults do. I tried to analyze the remains, but it’s just a mix of normal organic waste.”
“Can’t we tell the newspapers?” Maddie asked. “Couldn’t we go on TV, warn everybody about them? If people everywhere knew what they were and how to kill them, they wouldn’t last long.”
Buckley shook his head. “I thought of that a week ago,” he said. “I’ve talked to reporters, even staged a demonstration for one. Even if they believe me, they can’t get it into print or on the air. I’d need to convince not just the reporter, but his editor, and his editor, and even then, if they did publish it, nobody would believe it. And even if we found one somewhere – and right now we don’t know where any of them are, remember – even if we killed one live on TV, they’d all just call it a hoax. This is something people don’t believe just from hearing about it or reading it or seeing it on TV. You’ve got to see one of those things in person, get a look at them under their disguises, to believe it.”
That speech was greeted with several nods acknowledging its truth.
“All the papers refused?” Dr. Frauenthal asked. “You don’t think any of them would go for it?”
Buckley shrugged. “Maybe I could sell it to the tabloids, but nobody believes them anyway. It’d just be another ‘Space Aliens Stole My Lunch’ story. Something like this, it’s just not acceptable. People won’t believe it.”
“Nobody believed in vampires in 1939,” Maggie pointed out, “but somebody killed the last one anyway.”
“Sur
e,” George said, “Everybody knew how to kill them from all the stories. I mean, once you come up against a vampire, and you can’t disbelieve any more, it’s easy enough. You find its coffin and drive a stake through its heart; everyone knows that.”
“But nobody except us knows how to kill nightmare people,” Smith said, “and I don’t know what we can do about it, if we can’t get it all in the newspapers.”
“I never learned about vampires from the newspapers,” Maddie said. “What if you wrote stories about them, the way people wrote stories about vampires? Not news stories; books. Horror stories. What if you pretended it was all just fiction?”
“Yeah,” Alice said. “It wouldn’t matter if people believed it, as long as they knew what to do when they met one.”
“That might work, you know?” Buckley said, considering.
“But who’s going to write these stories?” Annie asked. “It won’t do any good to write them unless they get published somewhere.”
No one had a good answer to that at first. After a moment’s silence, Smith said, “I’m no writer. I’m a computer programmer. I don’t even write tech manuals.”
George said, hesitantly, “I used to play poker with a writer, a guy named Lawrence Watt-Evans. He lives over in Gaithersburg.”
“What kind of a writer?” Buckley asked. “I mean, is this a guy who writes articles for Popular Mechanics? That’s not what we’re looking for, if he is.”
“No,” George said, “He writes novels. Science fiction, mostly. Makes his living at it.”
Smith shrugged. “Hey, if he agrees, we’ll tell him everything that’s happened, and maybe he can write it all up as a novel.”
George nodded. “I’ll give him a call,” he said, “And see if he agrees.”
4.
Obviously, I agreed.
I don’t usually do stuff like this. People have tried to get me to write up their story ideas for them before, and generally I’m just not interested. I have plenty of ideas of my own, and usually the people who try this have a really peculiar idea of what the story is worth and how the money should be divided. Ideas are cheap; it’s turning them into stories and getting them down on paper that’s the hard work.
The Nightmare People Page 25