The Night People

by Edward D. Hoch

  “Unless it’s a full one.”

  She looked up, startled. “You feared the animals?”

  “I suppose I did. And the place itself, with its thick walls and iron bars and musty odor. I suppose that’s why I went there so often after the animals were gone. I was the king then, the king of the whole place. And I didn’t fear it anymore.”

  She shifted slightly in the grass, and her bare legs beneath the shorts were firm and tanned. “But you still seemed almost afraid when I suggested this place the other day.”

  Had he shown his feelings that openly? “I had a terrible experience here once. I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Not even to me, Tommy?”

  “I’m afraid you’d understand least of all.” And yet, looking into her pale eyes just then, he felt as if he’d always known her. As if he could tell her anything. She leaned over to kiss him then, and he thought it was the happiest moment of his life.

  She rarely wore jewelry, but this day he noticed a little-girl bracelet on her left wrist in place of her watch. “When I’m with you, time doesn’t matter,” she whispered in his ear. “Daddy gave me that bracelet a long time ago, when I was in school. See—the jeweler got my initials backwards. J.C. instead of C.J.”

  “You’re a big girl now, Carol.”

  “I’m a woman now.”

  The sky darkened too soon with the coming of evening; he hadn’t realized it was so late. “Perhaps we should be going,” he volunteered.

  “Before we’ve looked inside? One last time?”

  “All right,” he consented. “It’ll be gone in another month.”

  The door was trustingly unlocked, and as they stepped across the threshold he might have been stepping into the past. Suddenly, it was ten years ago, all too clearly, with the dimness of the outer twilight playing once more through the mesh-covered upper skylights, casting its uncertain illumination on the empty rows of open cages.

  “A horrible place!” she said with distaste.

  “Did you come here often, too?”

  “Some,” she answered. “But for me the fear wasn’t the animals. I never knew the animals here.”

  He led her along, brushing away cobwebs, squeezing her hand a bit too tightly. “Maybe we all have to come back to the thing we fear,” he said quietly.

  The musty smell of long disuse was in the air, and when Carol bravely touched an open cage, the barred door screeched with protesting age. The sound sent a shiver through him.

  “I’d forgotten how it was,” she said.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Wait! Come here!” She’d climbed into one of the open cages, and now she beckoned him to join her. “Kiss me first, Tommy. In here!”

  He followed her in and her lips closed on his. He felt himself pressed backward against the inner bars. In that moment it was if he’d known her all his life, and perhaps he had.

  “Carol …”

  Suddenly she shoved away from him and was out of the cage. The rusty bars swung shut in his face, and he saw her click a shiny new padlock into place. “Not Carol,” she whispered in a different voice, a voice he hardly recognized. “I’m Janet, Tommy. Remember? Janet Crown. I’ve waited ten years for you to come back.”

  “Janet!” The word was a scream of sudden, blinding terror.

  She was a little girl once more, and the zoo was the world, and life was death. “Perhaps they’ll hear your screams,” she said through the bars that separated them. “Perhaps you’ll still be alive in a month, when they come to tear the building down.”

  “Janet!”

  He screamed her name again, and kept screaming it until she was gone and he was alone in the empty zoo.

  Ring the Bell Softly

  IN THE OLD DAYS, when the people of the valley set their clocks and fed their chickens by the distant tolling of the church bell, Father Peter climbed the tower steps three times daily to pull the thick rope that ran upward to the single great bell. Now, since there was no longer anyone to hear its ringing, he made the trip but once a day. The bell rang out at six every morning—at the hour when farmers once rose to the demands of the field and the creatures of the wild awakened to another day.

  Sometimes, on days like this, he could watch the sun gradually rising over the distant hills, coloring the clouds with a misty pink that turned gradually to scattered scarlet. On these days at times Father Peter would climb to the very top of the tower, to gaze out at the countryside, at his land, his flock.

  But the days had faded, just as the flush of youth had faded from his body. Gradually the old families of the parish had splintered, with the youngsters going off to the cities to earn their living and find their mates. The old folks usually had remained, working the land until death or disease overtook them in their beds or in the fields or at the chipped kitchen table that seemed so much a part of their lives. Now, now in the autumn, there was nothing. The last family had moved away from the valley the week before, and Father Peter waited only for the official order from his bishop before closing the church and moving on himself.

  Each morning after the ringing of the bell he descended to the altar to say mass, and to address a few remarks to those dwindling few who attended. Now there were none at all in the church, but he went through the motions anyway, offering the prayers that were unchanged for centuries. It really didn’t matter that no one came any more—it didn’t matter to God at least.

  The rest of the day, after Mass, was filled with details for Father Peter, though now with the absence of any souls to comfort, the details had taken on the mists of change and transition. There was packing to be done, records to be completed, thousands of little tasks he wouldn’t have dreamed possible a few years earlier.

  And he was in the midst of these tasks, just after morning mass, when a surprising noise sounded from the trees around the church. The birds—something was disturbing the birds!

  Father Peter climbed up the tower steps and peered out over the browning trees to where the birds were. Yes, he saw at once the reason for their alarm—a figure, an aged tattered figure, was approaching the church through the underbrush. Here, where no one came any more, where even the birds were startled by a human presence.

  The priest climbed down from his vantage point and hurried to meet the stranger. Even now, at the moment he was packing to leave, an unfamiliar face was still welcome at the little church. After all, the stranger might even carry a message from his bishop, with the long-awaited orders to move on.

  “Hello, there,” Father Peter called out.

  The man looked up, and Father Peter had a quick impression of a thickly bearded face, noble but spent. It might have been the face of a warrior or a king, or a beggar. “Good morning. Father. I heard your bell.”

  “The sound carries a great distance on days like this. But I thought the valley was empty. Are you only passing through?”

  The man nodded, his broad beard shaking with the gesture. “Only passing through. May I stay and rest with you, Father?”

  “Certainly. Though I will be leaving soon. Perhaps even today if my orders should come through from the bishop. Come inside, my good man.”

  Father Peter had not yet eaten breakfast, so he prepared the food for the two of them. As he worked the bearded man spoke softly, indifferently, as if only making conversation. “You live alone here, Father?”

  “Alone, yes. There was a housekeeper at one time, but her family moved away from the valley. I could not ask her to give up her relatives and friends to continue catering to the foolish demands of someone such as I. Now, it is not really so difficult to provide my own meals and keep this little place clean.”

  “Why do you stay, if no one lives in the valley?”

  “Why? Because I have not been ordered elsewhere. God—and my bishop—have a plan for me. I simply carry it out.”

  “Do you think my coming here was part of the plan?” the stranger asked.

  “Who knows?” Then, as an afterthought,
he asked. “Do you have a name? Mine is Father Peter.”

  “Everyone has a name, Father. You may call me Chance.”

  “Just one name?”

  “Like yourself. What need is there for more?”

  They ate breakfast together, passing casual remarks about the mild autumn weather, and later they strolled among the trees. Above, the milky clouds looked down indifferently, and the breeze began gradually to stir the last dying leaves. And as they walked they might have been, here in this remote valley, the last two people on earth.

  “What do you do, Chance? Do you have a profession?” Father Peter disliked personal questions directed at strangers, but now there seemed to be some unfathomable reason, some near compulsion, for keeping the conversation going.

  “Oh, Father, I suppose you would call me a gambler. A gambler with life.”

  They walked further into the valley, and Father Peter showed him the houses and farms, now deserted, which had once lately brimmed with life. A little cemetery, now overgrown with weeds because there was no longer anyone who cared. The road to the nearest town, rutted and muddy, certainly unable to withstand another winter. And always the woods, the overgrown underbrush, waiting to swallow everything which man might abandon.

  “Soon no one will come here again,” Father Peter said.

  “Maybe it’s for the best, Father. Maybe this valley was planned only as God’s dumping ground.” And he took a small package from an inside pocket, a package carefully wrapped in brown paper and sealed with great quantities of red wax. At one corner the paper had begun to rip.

  “What is that?” the priest asked.

  The man named Chance pulled back his arm and hurled the package into the depths of the underbrush. “Just something,” he answered. “Just something that was getting too big to keep.”

  Was it there, among the vines and weeds waiting to take possession of his valley, that Father Peter first wondered if this man Chance might be the Devil?

  “Perhaps I should stay the night,” Chance said finally, as darkness began to drift like a fog across the countryside. “Would you have a bed for me?”

  “There is always room in my home,” Father Peter said, though he could feel the chill on his spine at this strange man’s words. Yet hadn’t he known from the beginning that the man would stay? Hadn’t he known it, somewhere in the depths of his mind?

  “Thank you. It has been a long time since I left my own home.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “England, a little place not far from London. You mean my accent didn’t give me away?”

  For the first time the priest realized the man did indeed speak with an English accent. He relaxed a bit. Certainly Satan would not speak to him with an English accent. “But aren’t you anxious to get back?”

  “For what? My business is finished.”

  “Your wife? Do you have one? Your children?”

  “Gone. All gone.” He shook his head. “But you don’t want to hear my troubles.”

  “That is my job, Chance—listening to other people’s troubles. God forgive me, I thought at first you were a demon sent to tempt me in my loneliness. Instead you are simply a man with a problem, like so many other men.”

  “But no problem for you, Father. I think I’ll turn in now, if you’ll show me the bed.”

  “So early?”

  “Like you, I must be up early in the morning.”

  Father Peter sighed and led the way to the room.

  In the morning, as if alone, Father Peter climbed the tower and began the daily tolling of the great bell. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, but this was the first day in more than a week that someone in the valley would be awakened by the bell. Someone other than the birds.

  But as he watched the birds rise from their sleeping places to take wing once more, he was bothered by a memory of the previous day. The man Chance had thrown away a package, but surely here in his valley Father Peter had a right to know what was in that package. What if it was something harmful to his birds?

  He made his way down from the tower, and headed immediately into the underbrush in search of the package. It took him some moments to come up with it, and when he did there was a light layer of morning dew still upon it. The package was carefully wrapped and sealed, as if for mailing, but the man Chance must have changed his mind somewhere along the line. From one already ripped corner he enlarged the split until the contents would be visible. After all, there was nothing wrong with looking, he told himself. The man had thrown it away. Heavy, some sort of metal …

  And then the gun dropped into his waiting hand.

  Perhaps he wasn’t really surprised. Perhaps he’d known all along it must be something like this. But now seeing it was nevertheless a bit of a shock. The gun was a revolver, well oiled and obviously in working condition. He opened the cylinder and emptied the shells into the palm of his hand. Five bullets had been fired. One remained in the weapon.

  Father Peter sighed and put the weapon back in its package. Then he carried the thing back inside. He would decide later what must be done.

  When he finished saying Mass, he saw that Chance was kneeling in a rear pew, his head bowed in prayer. “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning, Father Peter.”

  “Will you be leaving us now?”

  “Yes. There is no reason to stay longer,” the bearded man answered.

  “Was there a reason to come?”

  “What?”

  “Was there a reason to come? Why did you come, Chance?” He stood very close to the man as he asked the question. “Did you think of my valley only as a dumping ground for your package?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I know what you brought here, Chance. I found the package this morning and opened it.”

  The man named Chance sighed, as if beneath a great weight. “You had no right to do that.”

  “Perhaps not. But it is done.”

  “Maybe I’m the demon you fear after all, Father.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “But if I am?”

  “That is the chance I take every day of life. Now tell me about it.”

  “All right,” the man said finally. “I committed a crime out there, out in the world.”

  “Do you want to confess it?”

  “I’m not of your faith. I’m not of any faith any more, Father. I killed my wife and two children with that gun.”

  Father Peter blinked his eyes and stared off for a moment into the distance. He’d heard worse things in his day, certainly, but in that moment the man Chance seemed to embody evil in a most shocking way. “Are you sorry?” he asked finally.

  “Sorry? I don’t know, Father. I really don’t know. Not sorry enough to go back, I guess. But sorry enough to keep on running.”

  “It’s important to be sorry. Go back, turn yourself in to the police.”

  “No.”

  Father Peter turned away. “I cannot force you. I have not the strength. And yet, I feel God had a plan in bringing you to my valley.”

  “Maybe he did,” the bearded man said. “I left the gun here.”

  “Is my little church to be only a dumping place for the evidence of your crime?”

  The man named Chance shook his head. “You don’t understand, Father. I was saving the last bullet for myself. I threw the gun away because now I’ve decided to live.”

  Father Peter looked up at the sky and blinked against the brightness of the hazy sun. “All right,” he said finally. “Perhaps that is a start.”

  And presently, after Chance had departed to make his way out of the valley, Father Peter went back into the empty church to pray. Certainly the bearded man had not been a demon. He’d just been a man, sinning like all men. And what had been done for him? Had Father Peter done anything at all except perhaps to give him his life? Chance would keep on living, and someday he would repent—or kill again.

  Perhaps others would come to the valley
in the days while Father Peter waited. But after this he would ring the bell softly.

  Stop at Nothing

  GENT FELT THE SCRAPE of the razor against his throat and tried to relax, staring out the barber shop window at the noonday traffic on Honolulu’s Bishop Street. The islands were hot in April, with the temperature already hovering around a daily 78 as it climbed steadily toward the peak of August and September. For the most part the winter rains had passed, and mainland tourists arrived with every plane. Gent could spot them, even from the barber chair, as they wandered the streets with leis and cameras.

  “Know a man named Ken Su?” he asked the Hawaiian boy with the razor at his throat, trying to make it casual.

  “Ken Su? No.”

  “All right.” Gent fell silent again, watching the traffic. He’d come a long way, too long a way to be discouraged by a wrong answer from a kid barber.

  He paid for the haircut and shave and left the shop, joining the street crowds at high noon. Except for the giant palm trees that were everywhere, it might have been a street in Omaha or even Akron. He passed the First National Bank and the Alexander Young Hotel, seeing the backdrop of volcanic mountains in the distance. He found a bar on King Street near the City Hall and sat for an hour thinking. He thought about the pain in his chest that never went away now, and the damp whiskey rings on the bar before him. Most of all he thought about Rhonda, and what it had been like.

  He strolled down the beach for a long time, marveling silently at the twisted palm trees that towered over the sun-bathers on the sand. He’d never realized from the pictures that they were this tall—sixty or seventy feet, at least; taller than some of the hotels.

  Toward evening he went back to the barbershop and waited in an alley for the boy who had shaved him. When he came out, Gent stepped out of the shadow to grab him.

  “What?” he managed to gasp.

  Gent shoved him against the brick wall.

  “Ken Su—where is he?”

  The boy’s hand came out of his pocket, flashing a straight razor, but Gent was ready, and he slammed his fist into the Hawaiian’s stomach. The razor clattered to the concrete.