Tales from the Nightside

by Charles L. Grant

  I'm not exactly positive what happened next, what caused it. I don't know if it was my rage at what Roger was doing to himself and to the woman I could never have, or the exasperation of hunting for a job that no one wanted to give me in spite of my experience, or if it was somehow those idiot stories I remembered from around a warm campfire under trees that grasped and winds that whispered—but suddenly I dropped to my knees and pushed the shovel aside, using my hands to work at that foul grave, not caring if anyone heard me, only wanting to get the ugly thing done.

  And a minute or so later my fingers struck something soft, giving, and I snatched them away with a silent cry of disgust. Awkwardly, I held the shovel near the blade and scraped at the dirt, the other hand holding the flash until I could see what I was uncovering.

  I didn't have to exhume the whole thing; the head and shoulders were enough. Despite all the time in the ground, despite the workings of whatever lived beneath the surface, I knew what those tufted ears were, those eyes slanted even in death.

  It was a bobcat.

  A goddamned bobcat.

  Relief, then, and a boiling surge of anger.

  I spat, and wiped my hands hard against my thighs; I sniffed, and rubbed a forearm under my nose; and I began to laugh quietly, shaking my head, dropping the shovel at last and holding my hands in my lap.

  A goddamned more-frightened-than-he-was bobcat.

  The porch light, the kitchen light, both snapped on. The door opened, and I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and across the sodden grass. I did not resist when hands grabbed my shoulders roughly and yanked me to my feet.

  "Bastard!" Roger said.

  "Me?" My voice cracked high. "Me? It's... it's a bobcat, you stupid sonofabitch! A lousy bobcat cub you could have chased off with a feather. And for this I've been through hell? For this you've turned your wife into a—"

  He slapped me. He rocked me back over the uncovered grave,

  I and I stumbled, fell flailing with the flashlight still gripped in my § hand. I lay there for a long time, gulping for air and attempting to make sense of something, anything that might prevent me from slamming the shovel across his thick skull. And he... he, the idiot, was standing there as though I had already done it. His lips worked, his eyes glazed, and I knew suddenly that I had done something to him, though I had no idea what. Killed a dream, If perhaps, a child's dream that there were indeed things beyond a f normal man's knowledge—and Roger had wanted it, he had wanted it desperately. So desperately that he had allowed his befuddled, pressure-ridden mind to create things for him out of bobcats and fogs and dark November nights.

  I suppose I should have felt sorry for him. But he hadn't taken into consideration what he had done to Betty, and to me. Me, thinking all those people had been, might possibly have been, killed by some mythical fairy-tale beast. Me, praying each night for the fog that I loathed, the fog that I detested. He had made me make a fool out of myself, crawling around in the mud, digging up the body of a stupid—

  I damned near screamed.

  I do know I flung the flashlight behind me, heard it strike a rock, and saw its beam angle upward toward the trees. I know that I scrambled to my feet and took a step toward him. And I know that I saw Betty on the landing, the kitchen light clouding behind her as she held the collar of her bathrobe close about her throat.

  And then I saw Roger smiling.

  Crazy, I thought; the man's crazy.

  But the smile was a curious one. There was... there was reason there, clear and present sanity, and such pure and joyous satisfaction that I stopped moving toward him and stared.

  "Roger?"

  His gaze touched me for a moment, then slid away.

  Dear God, I couldn't help it—I turned around.

  The lights from the house outlined it. The flashlight's beam caught the deep startling green of its myriad eyes. I admitted to the fangs; I acknowledged the claws; and I also knew it wasn't a bobcat. It was nightmares too large and deathshades too pale, and danced too much like the fog that gave it form. It must have been this way when the stories were told, and it must have been this way when Jackie and the others had seen it, waiting for them out there on the dark deserted road. They had closed the windows, and maybe they screamed, but fog has a way of getting into places where nothing else can.

  The only thing I didn't do then was try to decide if it was my anger that gave it direction, or Roger's. He was, after all, my dearest friend; his pains were mine, and my agonies his.

  I took one last look at Bet, and I ran.

  Roger whispered something to me, and I ran.

  But there's one more thing about fog in the country—it's there; it's... there.

  So when my jacket caught in the brambles of the hedge, I had no time to learn what made the fog... alive.

  No time to move.

  And Roger had whispered: "Andy, my friend, Betty told me all about you."

  No time at all... in the swift-moving fog.

  From All the Fields of Hail and Fire

  The Tanners' small living room was almost too comfortably warm to stay awake in, but Gary rubbed impatiently at the stinging under his eyelids, ignoring another invitation from his mother to sit beside her and watch one of his favorite television programs. It was Friday again, and if the fire was to come, he had to be alert. He knew no one would believe him if he fell asleep in the middle of his warning.

  After a restless trip around the room, he perched on the board inside ledge of the bay window and traced incomplete faces in the frosted mist that coated the brittle cold panes. Outside, the late January night seemed fragile without a moon and he was sure that simply by stepping out onto the porch he could shutter the darkness as if it were a thin seath of new ice. The fireplace burned a reflection without warmth, and he poked at it, then leaned his cheek against the glass and shifted so that he could see down the lightless country road toward the weak glow of Covington's business district. Behind him, the television muttered quietly, a cigarette lighter snapped, and his father slammed cabinet doors in the kitchen.

  In spite of his determination and the chill against his face, Gary felt his eyes closing and shook his head sharply. He grinned, then, when he heard his father drop a glass, but before he could call out a teasing remark he blinked and pulled quickly away from the window as if he had been stung. One hand tagged nervously at his shirt, and he looked again.

  "Hey, Dad?"

  There was a deep-throated muttering in the hall, and "hush!" from his mother.

  "Hey, Dad, I think there’s."

  Suddenly, a screaming brace of patrol cars sped past the house, their circling warning lights turning the remains of the last snowfall an intermittent pink. The sirens barely had time to fade before the emergency squad alarm began hooting urgently across the valley. Immediately the room chilled as his father stumbled in, trying to slip into his bulky overcoat and lace his boots at the same time. Gary scrambled off the ledge and knelt to help with the laces.

  "Hey, Dad, can I go with you?"

  "No," his mother said. "Dave, he's been to too many already. They're not good for him. He doesn't sleep well as it is."

  "Oh, please, Dad? I promise I'll stay by the car. I did all the other times, didn't I?"

  "You heard your mother, Gary, and please hurry with those laces. One of these days I'm going to get a decent pair of—Pam, where are my gloves? And I can't find my helmet."

  Despite his anxiousness, Gary couldn't help smiling as his mother rushed from the room to the hall closet. "Come on, Dad," he said when he’d finished and stood up. “Please”.

  Tanner spun around and headed for the kitchen, Gary trailing, plucking his father's sleeve.

  "Please? I'll shovel the driveway for the next hundred years, I promise. Please? Come on, Dad, it's important."

  "What's so important about another fire?" his mother said as she shoved the black-and-white CD helmet under Tanner's arm... Then she frowned at Gary’s exasperation, scowled at his father’s res
igned and grinning quiescence. “Dave, I wish you wouldn't."

  Gary wasted no more time listening to the familiar argument. He raced to the closet and dragged out his own coat and boots. "For Pete's sake," he asked the voices in the kitchen, "what does being ten years old have to do with staying away from a lousy fire? I know better than that, Mom." Still buttoning his coat, he dashed past his father, kissed his mother quickly on the cheek, and was outside before anyone could stop him. Ten years old, he thought. It was practically the same thing she always said when scolding him for playing around the boulders in Savage's field.

  A minute later Tanner had backed up quickly out of the driveway the driveway, skidding into a brief spin before racing toward town. A small blue light flashed from the front of the car, and Gary pounded a fist into his palm while he listened to the shortwave radio squawk frustrating instructions to the Squad's members. A mile from the house they passed an open field, the largest break in the valley's pine forest between the Tanner residence and the first of Covington's street lights. Gary immediately pulled himself up to kneel on the seat so he could see past his father to locate the configuration of boulders he knew lay beyond the low crumbling stone wall. But there was nothing but a black unmoving curtain, and he wasn't at all angry when he was ordered to turn around and sit properly.

  "Dad, when are they going to catch the... guy that's doing all this?”

  There was a shrug, and the car swerved to avoid a pothole.

  "Beats me, son. All I know is, if this keeps up there won't be much town left to burn."

  "They keep getting closer to our house."

  "So I've noticed."

  "Is that why mom's so scared all the time?"

  "Could be," he said softly. "And when you don't sleep, she doesn't either, you know. Her nerves aren't the best lately."

  "All those kids...”

  A gloved hand reached through the dashboard’s green glow and tousled Gary’s hair. He almost blurted the secret then, because he knew his father thought Gary was drawn to the scenes of the fires to see if any more of his friends would turn up missing. He wanted to tell the truth, wanted to tell his father of the dreams and the boulders, but there was nothing believable in any of it until he could secure some tangible proof. And the only way he was going to accomplish that was by continuing to tag along until he either found something or was taken himself.

  He patted his coat pocket and allowed himself to relax just a little; the camera he had been keeping there had not fallen out during his sprint from the house to the car. Tonight, he told himself. And he shivered.

  “Cold, Gary?"

  "No, Dad, I'm just thinking."

  "Your mother was right. I shouldn't have let you come. I don't like to see you down so much."

  "I'm okay, honest," Gary said quickly, suddenly afraid he would be taken back home. “I was just thinking, that's all."

  The night parted reluctantly as the street lights became more frequent and the houses added their lamps, but all the imitation suns soon paled under the spreading orange-gold glow over the rooftops. Tanner swung off the highway and leaned to his horn slowing to avoid the islands of people who were drifting into the street. The intersections became crowded, but he was able to get within a block of the fire before he was forced to pull over.

  "Big, Dad," Gary said unnecessarily.

  Tanner grabbed his helmet from the backseat and slapped it on his head. "Remember your promise," he cautioned as he slid out the door. "Damn, it's cold! You stay here by the car and don't let me catch you anywhere else. If you get tired, curl up on the backseat. There's a blanket there you can use."

  Gary nodded, waiting until his fathered rushed away to meet the pump engine before clambering outside and perching cross-legged on the hood. A quick glance around revealed nothing immediately unusual; except for the location, it was the same as all the others.

  The first had been just a week before Christmas, an abandoned barn that had been used by local organizations' bands for practice and by church groups for fairs and dinners. And once in a while it was holiday-lighted to lure the high school crowd in for a dance. Its ownership was hazy and the town generally assumed responsibility for its upkeep, but no one stepped forward to take the blame for the assumed death of the Markham twins.

  The second and third were private homes near the grade school, and a mile closer to the town’s center. The charred bodies of five adults were found huddled against the locked front door, three children were presumed burned beyond recovery.

  The fourth was the store that belonged to Dawn Reiner's father. Gary had been there, had watched the blaze shatter the plate glass in front. The old man, Gary’s uncle, his mother’s brother, was found sprawled in an aisle. Dawn was missing.

  A gust of wind blew furnace heat into his face, and he shook his head to clear it of the acrid stench of smoke, of the frantic shouts of the volunteer firemen and the futile curses of the handful of police who were trying to erect a sawhorse barricade to keep the curious safely away. Then he closed his eyes against the unrelenting bellowing of the fire, having seen that where the post office and Keagen’s Stationery had been there was now a cloud-high torch. He filled his cheeks with air and blew slowly; his father and the others would be more concerned now with saving the adjoining buildings. There was nothing they could do to salvage what was already in flames.

  Impatiently he switched his attention to the milling onlookers, searching for the lank and towheaded Kim Wilde and hoping his father had answered the fire call as quickly as did Tanner. Kim was the only person he had spoken to about his dreams, having done so in the belief that his friend would see their ridiculousness and kid him out of taking them seriously. But Kim had been having them, too.

  There was a shift in the spectators then, as numbers increased, and Gary's line of sight to the fire was erased. Quickly he slid down off the hood, ran to the back of the car, and climbed up onto the trunk. Kneeling, he leaned his forearms on the roof and chewed absently on his lower lip. If Kim hadn't been allowed out, then he would have to go to the field by himself. Not that I'm scared, he told his fingers as they drummed on the dark vinyl covering. But the Savages were aptly named, and they did not appreciate little kids running across their property in the dead of night. Especially when Tanner and most of the other men in town suspected the two eldest boys of being the arsonists.

  It was almost a shame, Gary thought suddenly, that they would have to be let off the hook. But if they were not, if he and Kim could not unearth the proof they needed, then his father's prediction of, the town's demise might not necessarily be gloomy speculation.

  "Hey, Tanner! What are you doing way up there?"

  Gary turned quickly, his eyes bright in the light of the fire, tensed when he saw the trotting Wilde in the center of the street. He waved and slid to the ground. Then, after the first few words of perfunctory greetings, the two boys said nothing. Their breaths burst whitely into the evening, mingling as they looked at each other, separating when they leaned against the car and watched, hands deeply into pockets, for the signs both had seen when Dawn had disappeared.

  And in their dreams, figures racing in maddeningly slow motion through a night blacker than a cellar shadow, carrying on their twisted backs limp figures dangling. Running, soundless, feet striking ground that heaved like heavy ocean swells. A freeze in a single glare of snakelike lightning, and the figure would be illuminated and Gary would awaken, screaming silently because his throat was constricted and it was all he could do to breathe again.

  "There!" and he grabbed Kim's arm and pointed to shadows cast against the walls of the store across the street. They seemed completely unaffected by wind or shimmering firelight, deeper silhouettes of black carved in the already existent shadows of the firemen and their audience. He blinked, turned away, and looked back again. The shadows were still there, but now they were moving, and on their backs were bundles that were kicking.

  "My father—" he said after clearing his throat.r />
  "No," Kim said. "By the time we can get him to look for them, they'll be gone."

  Blue eyes into black, then, searching for excuses to label this night yet another dream. But there were no answers.

  "Dawn," Kim said quietly.

  "Right," said Gary, pushing away from the car. "We'll cut back, down the road and go over the wall past your place."

  Almost before he had finished speaking, they were dodging through knots of people who were huddled against the heat in front, the bitter cold that clung to their backs. Around the first corner the fire became a premature sunrise in the sky behind them. They said nothing, ignoring sidelong glances, and the sounds of their running, once submerged by the cacophony of the firefighting, slapped sharply against the walls of the houses, echoing until they were like an army of stampeding horses. Around another corner to the highway they raced, past Kim's unlighted house and into the tunnel of pines, the fingers of the great forest that covered the hills around Covington. And in the spaces between were small farms long ago deserted when their owners found riches in managing tourist camps farther back in the mountains.

  Only one remained in partial operation. The Savage Place.

  At the time-battered fieldstone wall, Gary stopped and pressed his hands against his sides, the cold air slicing into his lung and making his eyes water. Kim, just a few steps behind, draped himself over the chest-high barrier and panted loudly, shaking his head and covering his ears with his palms. The clouds that had greyed the daylight finally broke, and the moon-a bulging nail- brightened that grey to a not-quite-silver. Ahead of them was the field covered with crusted snow, crystaled in spots to gleam like frozen sea-foam.

  "Did we beat them?" Kim said, the words dropping like stones too heavy to lift.

  Gary rubbed his eyes to clear them, saw nothing but the black wall of the forest, and the snow.

  "Think so," he said.

  "Then..."

  But they did not move. From the beginning it had only been a talking for both of them, a whispering in the back of the classroom, a furtive plotting during recess. Neither wanted to believe in the creatures they had seen, neither wanted to know what they were doing with the missing children. But one afternoon following the last alarm, Gary had taken Kim into the field.