Things Beyond Midnight

by William F. Nolan

  At fifteen, in high school, Fred trapped the janitor’s Tabby in the gymnasium locker room, choked it to death, and carried it downstairs to the furnace. He was severely scratched in the process.

  As a college freshman, Fred distributed several pieces of poisoned fish over the Rockhurst campus. The grotesquely twisted bodies of seven cats were found the next morning.

  Working in the sales department of Hall Brothers, Fred was invited to visit his supervisor at home one Saturday—and was seen in the yard playing with Frances, a pet Siamese. She was later found crushed to death, and it was assumed a car had run over the animal. Fred quit his job ten days later because his supervisor had cat hands.

  Fred married Louise Ferber when he was thirty, and she wanted to have children right away Fred said no, that babies were small and furry in their blankets, and disturbed him. Louise bought herself a small kitten for company while Fred was on the road. He didn’t object—but a week after the purchase, he took a meat knife from the kitchen and dismembered the kitten, telling his wife that it had “wandered away.” Then he bought her a green parakeet.

  ZZZZZZZ Click

  This is Frederick Baxter speaking and I... wait, the sound level is wrong and I’ll—There, it’s all right now. I can’t tell anyone about this—but today I found an old Tom in an alley downtown, and I got hold of the stinking, wretched animal and I—

  ZZZZZZZ Click

  The heart trouble started when Fred was thirty-five.

  “You have an unusual condition,” the doctor told him. “Tour chest houses a quivering-muscled heart—fibrillation. This condition can prove fatal. Preventive measures must be taken. No severe exercise, no overeating, plenty of rest.”

  Fred obeyed the man’s orders—although he did not really trust a doctor whose cat eyes reflected the moon.

  ZZZZZZZ Click

  ... awful time with the heart. Really awful. The use of digitalis drives me to alcohol, which sends my heart into massive flutters. Then the alcohol forces me into a need for more digitalis. It is a deadly circle and I...

  I have black dreams. A nap at noon and I dream of smothering. This comes from the heart condition. And because of the cats. They all fear me now, avoid me on the street. They’ve told one another about me. This is fact. Killing them is becoming quite difficult... but I caught a big, evil one in the garden last Thursday and buried it. Alive. As I am buried alive in these black dreams of mine. I got excited, burying the cat —and this is bad for me. I must go on killing them, but I must not get excited. I must stay calm and not—here comes Louise so I’d better...

  ZZZZZZZ Click

  “What’s wrong, Fred?”

  It was 2 a.m. and she had awakened to find him standing at the window.

  “Something in the yard,” he said.

  The moon was flushing the grass with pale gold—and a dark shape scuttled over the lawn, breaking the pattern. A cat shape.

  “Go to sleep,” said his wife, settling into her pillow.

  Fred Baxter stared at the cat, who stared back at him from the damp yard, its head raised, the yellow of the night moon now brimming the creature’s eyes. The cat’s mouth opened.

  “It’s sucking up the moonlight,” Fred whispered.

  Then he went back to bed.

  But he did not sleep.

  Later, thinking about this, Fred recalled what his mother had often said about cats. “They perch on the chest of a baby,” she’d said, “place their red jaws over the soft mouth of the baby, and draw all the life from its body. I won’t have one of these disgusting things in the house.”

  Alone in the summer night, walking down Gillham Avenue, Fred passes a parked car, bulking black and silent in its gravel driveway. The closed car windows gleam deep yellow from the eyes inside.

  Eyes?

  Fred stops, looks back at the car.

  It is packed with cats.

  How many? Ten... a dozen, More... twenty; maybe. All inside the car; staring out at me. Dozens of foul slitted yellow eyes.

  Fred can do nothing. He checks all four doors of the silent automobile, finds them locked. The cats stare at him.

  Filthy creatures!

  He moves on.

  The street is oddly silent. Fred realizes why: the crickets have stopped. No breeze stirs the trees; they hang over him, heavy and motionless in the summer dark.

  The houses dong Gillham are shuttered, lightless, closed against the night. Yet, on a porch, Fred detects movement.

  Yellow eyes spark from porch blackness. A big, dark-furred cat is curled into a wooden swing. It regards Fred Baxter.

  Kill it!

  He moves with purposeful stealth, leans to grasp a stout tree limb which has fallen into the yard. He mounts the porch steps.

  The dark-furred cat has not stirred.

  Fred raises the heavy limb. The cat hisses, claws extended, fangs hatefully revealed. It cries out like a wounded child and vanishes off the porch into the deep shadow between houses.

  Missed. Missed the rotten thing.

  Fred moves down the steps, crosses the yard towards the walk. His head is lowered in anger. When he looks up, the walk is thick with cats. He runs into them, kicking, flailing the tree club. They scatter, melting away from him like butter from a heated blade.

  Thud thud thud. Fred drops the club. His heart is rapping, fisting his chest. He leans against a tree, sobbing for breath. The yellow-eyed cats watch him from the street, from bushes, from steps and porches and the tops of cars.

  Didn’t get a one of them. Not a damn one...

  The fireflies have disappeared. The street lamps have dimmed to smoked circles above the heavy, cloaking trees. The clean summer sky is shut away from him—and Fred Baxter finds the air clogged with the sharp, suffocating smell of cat fur.

  He walks on down the block.

  The cats follow him.

  He thinks of what fire could do to them—long blades of yellow crisping flame to flake them away into dark ash. But he cannot burn them; burning them would be impossible. There are hundreds. That many at least.

  They fill driveways, cover porches, blanket yards, pad in lion-like silence along the street. The yellow moon is in their eyes, sucked from the sky: Fred, his terror rising, raises his head to look upward.

  The trees are alive with them!

  His throat closes. He cannot swallow. Cat fur cloaks his mouth. Fred begins to run down the concrete sidewalk, stumbling, weaving, his chest filled with a terrible winged beating.

  A sound.

  The scream of the cats.

  Fred claps both hands to his head to muffle the stab and thrust of sound.

  The house... must reach the house.

  Fred staggers forward. The cat masses surge in behind him as he runs up the stone walk to his house.

  A cat lands on his neck. Mutely, he flings it loose—plunges up the wooden porch steps.

  Key. Find your key and unlock the door. Get inside!

  Too late.

  Eyes blazing, the cats flow up and over him, a dark, furry, stifling weight. As he pulls back the screen, claws and needle teeth rip at his back, arms, face, legs... shred his clothing and skin. He twists wildly, beating at them. Blood runs into his eyes...

  The door is open. He falls forward, through the opening. The cats swarm after him in hot waves, covering his chest, sucking the breath from his body. His thin scream is lost in the sharp, rising, all-engulfing cry of the cats.

  Louise found him two days later, lying face down on the living-room floor. His clothes were wrinkled, but untorn.

  A cat was licking the cold, white, unmarked skin of Frederick Baxter’s cheek.

  00:09

  VIOLATION

  I once raced sports cars. Even earned a trophy at a circuit near San Diego, competing in an Austin-Healey Le Mans 100-M. I enjoyed fast driving—which is fine on a track and which is stupid and dangerous on a public street or highway. But the truth is, during my “stupid” period, I drove almost as fast off the track as I
did on it. As a result, I collected a hatful of traffic tickets. (No, I didn’t lose my license, but I certainly deserved to lose it.)

  Traffic cops were The Enemy. I began to think of myself as their personal victim—and since I could do nothing to ease the frustration of being stopped and ticketed I sat down one afternoon and decided to take out my frustration at the typewriter.

  I wrote “Violation.”

  VIOLATION

  It is 2 a.m. and he waits. In the cool morning stillness of a side street, under the soft screen of trees, the rider waits quietly—at ease upon the wide leather seat of his cycle, gloved fingers resting idly on the bars, goggles up, eyes palely reflecting the leaf-filtered glow of the moon.

  Helmeted. Uniformed. Waiting.

  In the breathing dark, the cycle metal cools: the motor is silent, a power contained.

  The faint stirrings of a still-sleeping city reach him at his vigil. But he is not concerned with these; he mentally dismisses them. He is concerned only with the broad river of smooth concrete facing him through the trees, and the great winking red eye suspended, icicle-like, above it.

  He waits.

  And tenses at the sound upon the river—an engine sound, mosquito-dim with distance, rising to a hum. A rushing sound under the stars.

  The rider’s hands contract like the claws of a bird. He rises slowly on the bucket seat, right foot poised near the starter. A coiled spring. Waiting.

  Twin pencil-beams of light move toward him, toward the street on which he waits. Closer.

  The hum builds in volume; the lights are very close now, flaring chalk-white along the concrete boulevard, The rider’s goggles are down and he is ready to move out, move onto the river. Another second, perhaps two...

  But no. The vehicle slows, makes a full stop. A service truck with two men inside, laughing, joking. The rider listens to them, mouth set, eyes hard. The vehicle begins to move once more. The sound is eaten by the night. There is no violation.

  Now... the relaxing, the easing back. The ebb tide of tension receding. Gone. The rider quiet again under the moon.

  Waiting.

  The red eye winking at the empty boulevard.

  “How much farther, Dave?” asks the girl.

  “Ten miles, maybe. Once we hit Westwood, it’s a quick run to my place. Relax. You’re nervous.”

  “We should have stayed on the gridway. Used the grid. I don’t like these surface streets. A grid would have taken us in.”

  The man smiles, looping an arm around her.

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of as long as you’re careful,” he says. “I used to drive surface streets all the time when I was a boy. Lots of people did.”

  The girl swallows, touches her hair nervously. “But they don’t anymore. People use the grids. I didn’t know cars still came equipped for manual driving.”

  “They don’t. I had this set up special by a mechanic I know. He does jobs like this for road buffs. It’s still legal, driving your own car—it’s just that most people have lost the habit.”

  The girl peers out the window into the silent street, shakes her head. “It’s... not natural. Look out there, Nobody! Not another car for miles. I feel as if we’re trespassing.”

  The man is annoyed. “That’s damn nonsense. I have friends who do this all the time. Just relax and enjoy it. And don’t talk like an idiot.”

  “I want out,” says the girl. “I’ll take a walkway back to the grid.”

  “The hell you will,” flares the man. “You’re with me tonight. We’re going to my place.”

  She resists, strikes at his face; the man grapples to subdue her. He does not see the blinking light. The car passes under it swiftly.

  “Chrisdam!” snaps the man. “I went through that light! You made me miss the stop. I’ve broken one of the surface laws!” He says this humbly.

  “What does that mean?” the girl asks. “What could happen?”

  “Never mind. Nothing will happen. Never mind about what could happen.”

  The girl peers out into the darkness. “I want to leave this car.”

  “Just shut up,” the man says, and keeps driving.

  Something in the sound tells the rider that this one will not stop, that it will continue to move along the river of stone despite the blinking eye.

  He smiles in the darkness, lips stretched back, silently. Poised there on the cycle, with the hum steady and rising on the river, he feels the power within him about to be released.

  The car is almost upon the light, moving swiftly; there is no hint of slackened speed.

  The rider watches intently. Man and a girl inside, struggling. Fighting with one another.

  The car passes under the light.

  Violation.

  Now!

  He spurs the cycle to metal life. The motor crackles, roars, explodes the black machine into motion, and the rider is away, rolling in muted thunder along the street. Around the corner, swaying onto the long, moon-painted river of the boulevard.

  The rider feels the wind in his face, feels the throb and power-pulse of the metal thing he rides, feels the smooth concrete rushing backward under his wheels.

  Ahead, the firefly glow of tail-lights.

  And now his cycle cries out after them, a siren moan through the still spaces of the city. A voice which rises and falls in spirals of sound. His cycle-eyes, mounted left and right, are blinking crimson, red as blood in their wake.

  The car will stop. The man will see him, hear him. The eyes and the voice will reach the violator.

  And he will stop.

  “Bitch!” the man says. “We’ve picked up a rider at that light.”

  “You picked him up, I didn’t,” says the girl. “It’s your problem.”

  “But I’ve never been stopped on a surface street,” the man says, a desperate note in his voice. “In all these years—never once!”

  The girl glares at him. “Dave, you make me sick! Look at you—shaking, sweating. You’re a damn poor excuse for a man!”

  He does not react to her words. He speaks in a numbed monotone. “I can talk my way out. I know I can. He’ll listen to me. I have my rights as a citizen of the city.”

  “He’s catching up fast. You’d better pull over.”

  His eyes harden as he brakes the car. “I’ll do the talking. All of it. You just keep quiet. I’ll handle this.”

  The rider sees that the car is slowing, braking, pulling to the curb.

  He cuts the siren voice, lets it die, glides the cycle in behind the car. Cuts the engine. Sits there for a long moment on the leather seat, pulling off his gloves. Slowly.

  He sees the car door slide open. A man steps out, comes toward him. The rider swings a booted leg over the cycle and steps free, advancing to meet this law-breaker, fitting the gloves carefully into his black leather belt.

  They face one another, the man smaller, paunchy, balding, face flushed. The rider’s polite smile eases the man’s tenseness.

  “You in a hurry, sir?”

  “Me? No, I’m not in a hurry. Not at all. It was just... I didn’t see the light up there until... I was past it. The high trees and all. I swear to you. I didn’t see it. I’d never knowingly break a surface law, Officer. You have my sworn word.”

  Nervous. Shaken and nervous, this man. The rider can feel the man’s guilt, a physical force. He extends a hand.

  “May I see your operator’s license, please?”

  The man fumbles in his coat. “I have it right here. It’s all in order, up to date and all.”

  “Just let me see it, please.”

  The man continues to talk.

  “Been driving for years, Officer, and this is my first violation. Perfect record up to now. I’m a responsible citizen. I obey the laws. After all, I’m not a fool.”

  The rider says nothing; he examines the man’s license, taps it thoughtfully against his wrist. The riders goggles are opaque. The man cannot see his eyes. He studies the face of the violator.


  “The woman in the car... is she your wife?”

  “No. No, sir. She’s... a friend. Just a friend.”

  “Then why were you fighting? I saw the two of you fighting inside the car when it passed the light. That isn’t friendly, is it?”

  The man attempts to smile. “Personal. We had a small personal disagreement. It’s all over now, believe me.”

  The rider walks to the car, leans to peer in at the woman. She is pale, as nervous as the man.

  “You having trouble?” the rider asks.

  She hesitates, shakes her head mutely. The rider leaves her and returns to the man, who is resting a hand against the cycle.

  “Don’t touch that,” says the rider coldly, and the man draws back his hand, mumbles an apology.

  “I have no further use for this,” says the rider, handing back the man’s license. “You are guilty of a surface-street violation.”

  The man quakes; his hands tremble. “But it was not deliberate. I know the law. You’re empowered to make exceptions if a violation is not deliberate. The full penalty is not invoked in such cases. You are allowed to—”

  The rider cuts into the flow of words. “You forfeited your Citizen’s Right of Exception when you allowed a primary emotion—anger, in this instance—to affect your control of a surface vehicle. Thus, my duty is clear and prescribed.”

  The man’s eyes widen in shock as the rider brings up a beltweapon. “You can’t possibly—”

  “Under authorization of Citystate Overpopulation Statute 4452663, I am hereby executing...”

  The man begins to run.

  “... sentence.”

  He presses the trigger. Three long, probing blue jets of star-hot flame leap from the weapon in the rider’s hand.

  The man is gone.

  The woman is gone.

  The car is gone.

  The street is empty and silent. A charred smell of distant suns lingers in the morning air.