Nightmare Child

by Ed Gorman

  What he was about to do would at least make him feel that he'd given Diane every benefit of the doubt.

  On his way back, he saw the moon in the cloudy sky. He had a sense of utter isolation as he drove along at twenty miles per hour, wire fencing around a cornfield to his right dragged down by wind and snow, the gently sloping hills to his left a perfect white in the moonlight.

  Fifteen minutes later, he passed through the stone gates of the exclusive estate area, and then guided his car, lights off, to a small hill that looked down on both the McCay's place and Diane's.

  Putting a piece of gum in his mouth—up to three years ago it would have been a Lucky Strike—he stretched his legs out to the other side of the car and proceeded to do something he hadn't done in years—stake out a house.

  Memories of past stakeouts, especially during his post-Vietnam years as a Chicago detective, returned as he sat there watching the two dark houses. True to her word, Diane had gone to bed right away. As wind rocked the car, he started thinking of his vague wedding plans for them. He just hoped she was all right…

  He had been there half an hour when he saw the strange green light flicker in a strobe-like effect on the second floor of the McCay house.

  At first, he wondered if shadows weren't playing tricks on the darkened windows. But gradually, as he sat up and really began to watch, he saw that the intermittent flashes were in fact quite real.

  Instinctively, he pushed himself to the door and out from under the steering wheel. The cold was immediate and without pity. Clapping his gloved hands together for warmth, he set off down the hill, knowing that if anyone were watching he would certainly be easy enough to see…a dark shape against the blue-white of midnight snow.

  His nose numb, his eyes tearing up, he reached the edge of the McCay property already colder than he thought he could be in so short a time.

  Upstairs, the green stroboscopic effect continued.

  Walking around to one side of the house, his feet making loud crunching sounds, he began to hear, above the wind, a lewd kind of laughter, the sort he imagined would be heard at orgies. He had no idea to whom it belonged, only that in some terrible way it was disturbing.

  Reaching the screened-in porch, staring a moment at the furniture, covered with tarpaulins for the winter, he eased himself up the steps, listening.

  Once more, just above the edge of the furious wind, came the sounds of bawdy laughter. He tried to imagine any of the three people he'd seen that night—Jenny, Mindy, Jeff—laughing this way, but could not.

  He opened the door, which made a scrawing sound from frozen hinges, and went inside.

  From his coat pocket, he took a small metal pick, a type available to all classes of burglars. He fitted the pick to the lock on the doorknob and, within moments, stepped inside the kitchen.

  Eerie shadows played across the refrigerator and the counters and cupboards. The scents of cinnamon and paprika almost forced him to sneeze. Silver frost rimmed the windows.

  From upstairs, a muffled scream could be heard over the lewd laughter.

  Cautiously, covered now with sweat and beginning to tremble, he moved toward the center of the house, and the wide, splendid staircase he had ascended earlier.

  The first thing he noticed, the deeper he went into the home, was that several large pieces of expensive furniture had been smashed into shards, including the dining room table and a china cabinet. He began to see the same place Diane had described earlier—a ransacked jumble of smashed furnishings and decorations that had been decimated into junk.

  Tripping over the television set, which looked as if it had been cleaved in half with an axe, he righted himself by grabbing onto the banister.

  Slowly, his eyes rose up the long, winding staircase to the landing, where deep shadows lurked like waiting animals. All his boyhood fears of the dark—you know something waits for you in the shadows—returned as he started up the staircase. Suddenly, his mouth was dry and his heart seemed uncontrollable in his chest. His flesh was cold and dead with goose bumps. Wind whipped the roof and windows.

  As he neared the top, the laughter came once more. But this time the tone of it was different, suggesting mourning rather than pleasure, a curious sobbing sound.

  Tightening his grip on the banister, he went up the rest of the stairs, coming to the landing, which was filled with shadows, and letting himself be trapped inside them, like water that was over his head.

  He pulled his service revolver from his shoulder holster. He was ready. He had no idea for what.

  At the top of the stairs, he saw the outline of the hallway, and proceeded in that direction. Again, he had to be careful of where he walked because of the junk that had been strewn everywhere. The smell of human excrement —warm, oppressive—was in the air.

  Two doors down, he heard the laughter once more. Thankful that he finally had a direction, he edged through the gloom of the hallway toward the noise.

  Reaching the door, he pressed his ear to the wood, listening. Again, he thought of an orgy, for there were the sounds of moist sexual pleasure, of small sighs and groans of ecstasy, and, over all that, the laughter again. The mourning gone now, the laughter was lewd. He put his hand to the doorknob, turned.

  As he did so, he saw along the bottom of the door the stroboscopic green flashes of light. In the shadows, even this thin line of light was almost blinding.

  He turned the doorknob.

  And that was when the laughter inside the room turned into the shrieks of the insane. As if he had been seized by invisible hands, he was pushed back against the far wall, his senses filled with it all now—the strong odor of excrement, the green light, the mad laughter that was somehow the worst of it all.

  And then a voice he did not recognize said, "Mr. Clark wants to join us but he's afraid. Poor Mr. Clark. If only he knew what was going on here."

  More laughter, followed by movements that suggested sexual satisfaction.

  Spinning away from the wall, not knowing what to do next, he heard the voice say, "Don't be afraid, Mr. Clark. Soon you will be one of us and then you will know no fear whatsoever."

  Laughter came as his eyes searched through the darkness for some clue as to where the voice originated. The hallway? One of the rooms down the hall? Where?

  Knowing he needed to get out of this house and call for help, Clark started back down the hallway. Groping his way along the wall, knowing that his fingers were sliding through swaths of human feces, his trembling legs took him all the way to the top of the staircase before he heard screams and then the sound of the door opening back down the hall.

  Even this far away, the green light bathed him. He glanced down at his arms. They were green.

  More screams were followed, by the slapping of feet against the carpeting. Terrified to turn back to see what was coming for him, he clenched his service revolver tighter in his hand.

  Just as he spun around, they leaped for him, Mindy and Jeff, completely naked in the stroboscopic green light, deep wounds pouring blood from various parts of their bodies, leprosy-like sores streaming pus. Mindy had no hair, her teeth were little more than black stubs, and her breath was fetid. One of Jeff's eyes had been ripped from its socket and the wound dripped blood. He carried a butcher knife that seemed to be as long as a spear. He raised it above Clark's head, about to bring it down, when Clark fired.

  Three shots went into Jeff McCay's face.

  His reaction was to keep on laughing.

  Diane had been asleep two hours, when her bedroom curtains began making a rustling noise, as if someone were rubbing them together, sibilant as a snake.

  She awakened to a room dark except for moonlight through yellow curtains. Her first impulse was to check the luminous face of her digital nightstand clock. Her second impulse was to draw the electric blanket up tighter around her chest. She had a sense she was not alone.

  Shortly after her husband had died, Diane had begun having dreams in which he appeared to her in the form of a
ghost. Diane did not have strong feelings either way about the possibility of the supernatural—it might well exist, it might well not. Boldly, she'd always told people that she wanted some kind of occult experience. That way she would become convinced that there was a life beyond this one. But now, leaning up in her bed, her entire body tense beneath her soft blue cotton nightgown, she knew that for all her brave talk, an occult experience would frighten her.

  The curtains rustled again. She snapped her head in their direction.

  "Aunt Diane."

  In the silence of her bedroom, the clarity and plaintiveness of the voice was unmistakable. Jenny.

  "Aunt Diane."

  Hard as she looked, Diane saw no little girl anywhere in the room. All she noticed was a slight cooling of the air, and a faint sweet smell.

  "Aunt Diane."

  From behind the curtains she came, a little girl not quite formed yet, her body like that of an unfinished painting. But she was quickly being filled in as she stood there in the moonlight. All Diane could ludicrously think of was the transition stage of being "beamed up" on the old "Star Trek."

  At last, then, a complete Jenny stood before her in a dark dress and white socks and black patent-leather strap shoes. Her hair hung in blond pigtails and her eyes gave an impression of unbearable sorrow.

  "Jenny," Diane breathed, throwing back the covers and starting toward the girl.

  "No," Jenny said, "stay there."

  "But—"

  "It will be better, Aunt Diane, believe me."

  The girl Diane had seen earlier that night had been sitcom sweet. This girl was more like the Jenny Diane had always known—reflective, intelligent, and mature far beyond her years.

  "You saw what just happened? How I appeared to you, Aunt Diane?"

  "Yes."

  "So you understand what's…happened to me."

  "Not completely, Jenny."

  "I'm dead, Aunt Diane. And I have been dead since this summer."

  "Oh." How stupid, even smug, that sounded: "Oh." But she had absolutely no idea of what else to say. "Do you know how I died?"

  "They killed me."

  "They?"

  Jenny pointed to the window. "Mindy and Jeff."

  "But they love you."

  Jenny shook her head sadly. "Maybe they did at one time, Aunt Diane. But they went through Mindy's part of the inheritance. The only way they could get my part of the money was to murder me, which they did."

  Sitting there, hearing the words so clear in the shadows of the bedroom, Diane had no choice but to accept their reality. Several minutes ago she had convinced herself that this was no dream or nightmare. Jenny really had appeared in Diane's bedroom. And now Jenny was telling her, in effect, that she was a ghost.

  "I want to die, Aunt Diane."

  "But I thought—"

  Jenny's head tilted downward. "My soul hasn't passed into heaven yet. A…demon took hold of me. A demon that wants vengeance." She parted the curtains, stared for a time at the moon. "You'd think that's what I'd want—vengeance. When I realized what they had done to me, I was very, very angry. I wanted to kill them myself. But then I walked down a long, white tunnel and I felt a great peace as I neared the end. I forgave them. I began to understand how petty most human concerns are, especially ugly ones such as murder and vengeance. But then, as I neared the end of the tunnel and I saw a huge door opening to receive me, I could feel the demon inside me struggling for dominance. All around me, the white light began to fade and I saw the door start to close. Before, there had been very gentle music, but now there was just this…terrible silence. I don't know how else to describe it. And when I touched my flesh, realized that it was no longer my flesh. It was gray and scaly and slimy. It was the demon's flesh and she wanted me to go back to earth and return to Mindy and Jeff. But before I killed them, she wanted me to torture them every way possible. And that's what I've been doing since that day you found me wandering around on the hill. I've destroyed their lives in every way I could through physical torture, mental torture, and fear. That's what you saw me doing tonight. Whenever guests come, I make sure the house is spotless and we're one big happy family so that if Mindy or Jeff happens to tell somebody what's going on—how I'm in control of things, how I'm actually a demon—nobody will believe them. When we're alone, I even turn them into demons—though not completely. I leave just enough of their minds human so that they can feel disgust over what they've become."

  "Oh, Jenny."

  "But tonight the demon wants me to kill them. She's done with them now. And she wants me to kill one other person, too."

  "Who?"

  "Your friend. The police Chief. He snuck back. He wanted to check out the situation one more time, by himself. So he went inside the house and—"

  "He's there now."

  "Yes. And that's why you've got to stop me."

  "Stop you?"

  Jenny nodded. "If you don't stop me, I won't…be in control, Aunt Diane. There's something inside me that—"

  It was all so crazy. Diane wasn't even sure she was quite awake yet. Wind slammed at the windows. The digital clock made faint ratcheting sounds as it turned over its big luminous numbers. Diane reached out for Jenny and started to speak; but then a voice that could not possibly be Jenny's issued from the young girl's mouth.

  "It's too late," the voice said. "It's too late."

  And then a sound not unlike throaty laughter issued from Jenny's mouth, and Diane, screaming, fell back on the bed.

  After beating him, they put him in the closet, promising him that he would prove useful later. The naked Mindy, touching her breasts as she spoke, seemed especially eager to see Clark again. It had been she who'd stopped Jeff from stabbing the police Chief to death.

  The closet: utter, unyielding darkness, except for a thin line of moonlight between door and floor; dust motes that made him sneeze a few times; the hems of women's dresses brushing his shoulders.

  He had no idea how long he'd been in there. Twenty minutes…two hours. It could easily be either.

  He wondered where they had gone, shuddering as he thought about them: their open sores, their crazed eyes, their psychotic laughter. He knew now that whatever Diane had told him about this house was true…

  Down the hall he heard distant, muffled sounds, but what they were he could not tell from there.

  He sat forward, the clothesline binding his wrists and ankles together, pulling tight, cutting into his skin.

  He slammed his head against the louvered closet door. It was the only way he was going to get it open. He had slammed his head three times when he heard the wailing start…

  At first, it sounded as if an animal had been mortally wounded. The one thing that kept Clark from being a hunter was the suffering he'd seen animals go through. This sound was like that…an animal on a tightrope across the dark abyss of death…Only gradually did he learn that the sound was human.

  Moonlight fell through the louvered door, casting faint bars on his face. Sweat in beads stood on his forehead. His bulky jaw muscles contracted as he listened to the wailing and the shrieking grow even worse.

  Abruptly, footsteps began slapping down the hall toward this room, toward this closet…

  "Oh, God! Help me! Help me!" A female voice screamed over and over.

  He heard her fall through the door, cracking bones as she slammed to the floor.

  "Oh, God!" She said, again and again, helpless curse, helpless prayer.

  She began sobbing then, and all he could liken it to was the mother he'd had to inform one lovely July afternoon that both her young sons had drowned in a sandpit. He hadn't thought he'd ever get the woman to stop crying—she had literally torn out handfuls of her own hair—or to sit inside the squad car while he summoned an ambulance as much for her as for the dead boys…

  She flung herself against the closet door, shattering it.

  "Help me! Help me!" she cried.

  Mindy tore the door away in pieces and stood there before h
im, naked, her body still covered with wounds and sores, but her ghoulishness was gone.

  "Help me!" She screamed.

  "I can't." He tried to show her the clothesline they'd lashed to his body.

  "Oh, God!" she said, and fell to the floor, starting to untie him immediately.

  She smelled so badly that he had to hold his breath. He cringed when some of the juices from her wounds sprayed across his face.

  "I'm sorry we did this to you," she said. "It wasn't…us. It was Jenny."

  "Jenny?"

  "I know you don't believe that right now. But you will, you will."

  Finished untying him, she helped him to his feet. They stood in a bedroom made silver by moonlight. When he stood away from her, he could smell sweet sachet on a dressing table.

  "I don't know what to do," she said, walking around in frustrated circles. "I can't call the emergency ward. They'll send somebody out and—"

  "You need to calm down and tell me what's wrong."

  "It's Jeff. He's…going into one of his seizures she puts him in."

  "Who puts him in?"

  She glared at him as if he were the crazy one. "Why, Jenny, of course."

  "Little Jenny—the one I saw tonight?"

  She laughed bitterly. "Little Jenny. Oh, that's a good one. You'll have to tell that one to Jeff."

  Just then there was a scream from down the hall that raised goose bumps on Clark's arms.

  "Jeff!" she cried.

  "Come on," Clark said, and ran out of the room and into the dark hall.

  Mindy, sobbing, said, "We've got to help him before Jenny gets back here. She plans to kill us tonight—including you."

  Her words only made Clark run that much faster.

  It began as spasms, Jenny shaking uncontrollably as she stood in the dim light coming through the curtains.

  Diane, dressed now in jeans and a sweat shirt and Reeboks, went immediately to Jenny and started to put her arms around her.

  "Jenny, let me help you."

  The voice that came from the small girl's mouth was no longer her own. It was masculine and throaty and ugly. "It's starting, Aunt Diane. The demon—"