And her eyes had seemed to glow red for an instant, like eyes in a badly-angled flash picture.
Smith nodded politely to her, closed the door, and headed toward the bedroom.
The air in the apartment was still stifling hot. The bedroom window was still open, but the outside air, which was now noticeably cooler than the air inside, seemed reluctant to enter.
Mrs. Malinoff’s knees hadn’t creaked.
Maybe, Smith tried to tell himself as he crossed to his bedroom closet, the unusual exertions of the morning had loosened up her joints.
Her eyes had gleamed red.
Sometimes eyes gleamed red in flash photos when the bright light reflected directly off the retina, at the back of the eye. Maybe Mrs. Malinoff’s eyes had caught a stray bit of sunlight somehow to produce the same effect.
Except that it had happened in the windowless fourth-floor stairwell, under a skylight crusted over grime, and the only electric light had been behind her.
He pulled out his suitcase without thinking about it, and threw it open on the bed.
She had smiled at him.
She hadn’t shown her teeth, though, and with a glance at the window screen he had this sudden mental image of Mrs. Malinoff grinning broadly, showing dozens of silver-grey needle teeth like the thing in his nightmare, and then he was grabbing for his shirts and stuffing them into the suitcase, and he knew that he was not going to stay the night in that apartment again, no matter whether the air conditioner was fixed or not, not even if they gave him the place rent-free.
The Red Roof Inn was the closest motel, since there were none at all in Diamond Park itself, so that was where he went. There were at least half a dozen others in Gaithersburg, and more in Germantown, but the Red Roof Inn was the closest.
He threw his suitcase in the back seat of his Chevy and went, his hands tight on the steering wheel as he waited his turn to exit the parking lot, tight on the wheel as he drove up Barrett Road to Route 117, east on 117 to 124, left on 124, past the Shell station and then right into the parking lot of the motel.
In the motel office he stared closely at the clerk, studying his eyes to be sure they didn’t gleam red, trying to see his teeth to be sure they were white and blunt.
The clerk was perfectly ordinary, a bored young man with sandy brown hair, clearly uncomfortable, despite the air conditioning, in the bright red jacket with the motel chain’s logo on it. His teeth were white; his eyes were green, or maybe hazel. Smith took the key to Room 203 without comment.
Once safely in his room he threw his suitcase on the bed, hesitated, and then, feeling slightly foolish, checked the place over carefully, making sure the window was locked and the grilles securely bolted down on the heating/cooling vents.
Then he went back downstairs and crossed the parking lot to the Denny’s Restaurant next door, to finally get himself a cup of coffee, something he never had gotten that morning, and while he was at it he would get something to eat to quiet his empty stomach.
7.
That night he turned off David Letterman, turned out the light, and lay back on the bed, telling himself he should get some sleep.
Telling himself that did not make it so, however; he was still too nervous to sleep, particularly in a strange bed. After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, on a sudden impulse he turned and looked toward the window.
His breath caught in his throat, and he felt himself choking, strangling, as his eyes widened so far that they stung.
That creature, that nightmare person, was peering in the window at him. The red eyes gleamed, and the silvery teeth sparkled a duller red in the glow from the motel sign.
And behind it he could see other faces, human faces, familiar faces.
Mrs. Malinoff. Nora Hagarty. Walt Harris, from C31, who complained whenever he played loud music.
Mrs. Malinoff was leaning over the nightmare thing’s shoulder, and as he watched, frozen, unable to breathe, she reached up with both hands and began peeling her upper lip back.
The skin of her face slid up, across her cheeks and over her nose, peeling back like a rubber mask and revealing greyish flesh and gleaming silver needle-teeth beneath, eyes a baleful red.
On the other side Nora Hagarty was tugging at her ears, as if to loosen them; then she, too, reached for her upper lip.
As Mrs. Malinoff’s face came away, revealing completely the horror beneath, his breath came free, his throat opened, and he began to scream.
He screamed wordlessly, raw sound pouring out.
The red eyes blinked in unison, both pairs of them; Nora Hagarty’s hands froze where they were, her lip peeled back ludicrously to the tip of her nose. Walt Harris ducked down out of sight, vanishing completely.
Slowly, reluctantly, Nora’s hands pulled the skin of her face back into place, and she, too, dropped out of sight.
The thing that had been Mrs. Malinoff tugged her skin back down over the sparse black hair of its head, back across forehead, eyes, and nose, resuming its human appearance, and then it, too, disappeared.
The last one, the undisguised nightmare face, frowned at him. There was something horribly familiar about the gesture. It raised a long-fingered hand in a parting salute, just as it had before, and then it was gone.
He stopped screaming and caught his breath, gasping, taking deep, ragged gulps of the room’s artificially cool air.
Someone pounded on the door. “Mr. Smith? Are you all right in there?”
“I’m fine,” he gasped, recognizing the motel clerk’s voice, “I’m fine. I just had a nightmare.” He gathered what little remained of his composure, and said, “I’m sorry if I disturbed anyone.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the clerk asked, “Could you open the door, please, sir, and let me make sure you’re all right?”
Smith got to his feet and reached out, then paused.
Could it be a trick?
He leaned over and looked out the window.
Nobody was there.
He looked through the peephole.
Only the clerk was there.
He had never seen this clerk around the Bedford Mills complex, he was sure. And he had square white teeth and hazel eyes.
He turned the knob and opened the door.
Nothing leaped in at him. Nobody was there on the balcony but the clerk. Smith tried to smile at him.
“I’m fine, really,” he said.
The clerk peered suspiciously past him, then at his face. “If you’re sure you’re okay, Mr. Smith…”
“I’m sure,” Smith told him. “Really, I’m quite sure. It was just a nightmare – a very bad one, but just a nightmare. I’m really sorry if I disturbed anyone.”
“That’s okay, Mr. Smith,” the clerk told him, in one of those calming voices that can be so maddening. “Listen, if there’s any problem, you call me, okay?”
“I will.” Smith managed a smile, then closed the door, repeating, “It was just a nightmare.”
This time, however, he didn’t believe it.
Chapter Two:
Thursday, August 3rd
1.
Smith was unsure whether or not he had slept, but when dawn crept up over I-270 and spilled down the railroad tracks behind the motel he decided to pretend he had, that he was fully rested. He got out of the chair where he had spent most of the night, stretched, and headed for the bathroom.
At first, he had only intended to rinse his face, but after he had flushed the toilet and washed his hands he reconsidered and took a long, hot shower.
When he stepped out and towelled himself off he still felt a bit woozy from lack of sleep, but the gummy taste in his mouth was gone, and his skin was fresh and clean. He felt as if he were just now waking up, as if the long night in the motel and the entire day before had been one long continuation of his initial nightmare.
He knew that it had not been a nightmare, that he had seen something strange and abnormal, but for the moment he was willing to not think about it, to worry i
nstead about the demands of everyday life.
For example, he asked himself, did he plan to go to work today?
It was Thursday. He was still ahead of schedule, and had had so little sleep the past two nights that he was quite sure he would be unable to write any code the computers would accept. On the other hand, it would be a step toward getting back to normal.
And if he didn’t go to work, just what was he going to do all day?
One alternative would be to spend the day looking for somewhere new to live, as he had no intention of returning to the Bedford Mills complex.
In either case, he decided as he folded the towel, he would want to look fairly respectable. He picked out a yellow sport shirt and dark brown slacks that would serve that purpose, and dressed quickly.
And whatever he was going to do later, the first thing to do was to eat some breakfast. He’d only managed one meal the day before.
Checking his wallet and room key carefully, he took a last look around the room, stepped out on the motel balcony, and then closed the door behind him.
It was almost seven o’clock. I-270, behind him, was already buzzing with traffic. Denny’s, across the parking lot, was busy with the breakfast rush.
He noticed the sign that read “Always Open,” and snorted quietly, thinking he’d been foolish to stay in his room. He could have gone to the restaurant and gotten himself a snack at two or three in the morning, when the place would have been almost empty.
He’d missed his chance. He would have to settle for an ordinary breakfast. He headed down the stairs and across the lot.
The food at Denny’s was good, but the service could be slow, and was that time; he had plenty of time to consider his plans as he sat in a booth waiting for his fried eggs. He tried to break everything down logically, as if he were planning out a program.
First, what was the actual situation? Never mind what the customer says is happening – in this case, what he thought he’d seen – what was really happening?
Second, what needs to be done about the situation?
Third, how could he do it?
Well, to start with, he didn’t know the actual situation.
He thought he’d seen something at his top-floor window at three in the morning.
The following day, all the other people in the apartment complex vanished, and were found emerging from a basement several hours later with a story about a phony bomb scare.
Minor details, such as Nora Hagarty’s hat and Mrs. Malinoff’s knee, had seemed strange after everybody came back.
That night he’d again seen something bizarre at his window.
That was it, so far – four things out of the ordinary. Were they related?
The two apparitions were obviously connected, since they involved the same monstrous face. And Nora Hagarty and Mrs. Malinoff and Walt Harris were tied in by the second apparition, as well.
The connection to the mass disappearance was less definite.
And what had really caused the disappearance?
If it had really been a prank, why hadn’t he been included?
He could make guesses, and he did.
He might have been skipped by a prankster because, exhausted from staying up so late, he had slept too heavily to be awakened by knocking at his door.
Nora Hagarty had said the boy came around at about five, when he would have been asleep for roughly an hour and a half. He would have been deeply asleep.
But why was everyone else so easily awakened? If they were taking it seriously enough to rouse everyone, how had he been skipped?
And how did it relate to the apparitions and the general strangeness?
Could somebody be playing an absurdly elaborate prank on him, and him alone?
What if the faces at the window had been faked, somehow? Special effects could do amazing things, he knew.
What other explanation could there be for a face hanging thirty feet in the air?
Suppose that Nora Hagarty and Mrs. Malinoff and Walt Harris had decided, for some perverse reason, to frighten him. Suppose they had somehow projected that inhuman face on the outside of his window, using some sort of movie or hologram.
That would account for how it could reach a fourth-floor window, and how it could vanish so mysteriously, without leaving a trace.
For the second apparition, they could have used a live actor in make-up, and the four of them could have just ducked away around the corner, or into the next room, when he started screaming, before the clerk could see anything strange about them.
The slouch hat and the strange smile would be easy little teases. The red gleam from Mrs. Malinoff’s eyes – that could be colored contact lenses.
The knee that didn’t creak was harder to explain. Some sort of special treatment, perhaps?
He had no idea what caused creaking joints in the first place, so he couldn’t even guess at what would cure them.
What about the disappearance, though? How did that tie in?
It might be coincidence – or it might be that the pranksters, Hagarty and Malinoff and Harris, had done that, too, hiring some kid to go around and wake up everybody except that guy in Apartment C41, with the story about Iranian terrorists.
It could have happened that way. He told himself that. It could have.
And didn’t an elaborate practical joke make more sense than some sort of needle-toothed monster hiding behind Mrs. Malinoff’s face?
His hand shook slightly as he sipped his coffee.
If that was done with special effects, they were damn good, he thought. It had been totally convincing.
Although, he added mentally, he had been tired, it had been dark out on the balcony, he had been caught by surprise – maybe it hadn’t been that hard to fool him.
Why would anyone want to play such a trick on him, though? Why go to such incredible lengths?
He shook his head, and sipped coffee again. It didn’t make sense.
He knew that he had annoyed Walt Harris sometimes, by playing his stereo too loudly. He knew that Mrs. Malinoff distrusted him because he was relatively young and because he worked with computers, which she hated and feared. Why, though, would they go to such fantastic trouble?
And what had he ever done to Nora Hagarty?
He shrugged that question off easily enough; the other two could have brought her in for money, or the sake of a friendship, or just for fun.
Maybe the three of them – or four, if whoever had worn the grey make-up and fake teeth was one of them, and not a hired actor – were a little gang that did this for kicks.
Maybe they’d even done it before. Maybe, if he knew more about them, he would find out that they’d pulled any number of stunts on other people.
His eggs finally arrived, and he cut a piece with his fork as he considered that.
The whole thing could be the work of three or four middle-aged tricksters.
It could be. He reminded himself that he hadn’t proven anything with all his clever theorizing. It could be tricksters.
Or it could be that the monsters were real.
2.
He didn’t like the idea of real monsters lurking outside his windows, but they had certainly looked real. The true skeptic, he remembered reading somewhere, doesn’t take anything on faith, and that includes the non-existence of the supernatural, just as much as its existence.
Suppose, then, that the monsters he saw were real. How did that fit the facts?
He sopped up some runny yolk and lifted the fork to his mouth as he thought that over.
If the monsters were real, then they presumably had some unusual abilities, in order to appear outside a fourth-floor window and vanish so abruptly.
If the monsters were real, then Nora Hagarty and Mrs. Malinoff were monsters – he had seen that with his own eyes. That would explain the hat and the eyes.
The knee could be explained by assuming that Mrs. Malinoff – the real Mrs. Malinoff – had been a normal human being, and had been replaced
by a monster in her shape.
Walt Harris could be a monster, or could be a human being working with the monsters. His face had never displayed any inhuman characteristics.
What about the disappearance?
He dabbed a bit of yolk off his chin as he considered that.
The monsters had been responsible, he supposed. The fact that everything at Bedford Mills had seemed perfectly normal on Tuesday, but on Wednesday everyone had vanished temporarily and when they came back at least two of them were no longer human, certainly seemed to imply…
He stopped at that point, his fork dangling from one hand, his napkin in the other.
What on Earth was he thinking? This was like something out of a horror movie. “…two of them were no longer human…?”
But he had seen the monsters. He had seen that hat, and Mrs. Malinoff’s smile. All his neighbors had vanished.
He clenched his jaw for a moment and told himself that he would think it through, no matter how ridiculous it sounded.
Suppose, then, that all his neighbors had been herded away by the monsters, and that when they came back some of them had become monsters.
Why had he been neglected? Because he slept too soundly?
Wasn’t anybody else in the entire complex a sound sleeper?
And why wouldn’t the monsters have found some way to awaken him, if that was what they wanted?
Another possibility occurred to him, and suddenly seemed to make far more sense.
What if the monsters had not come at five in the morning, but at three?
What if he had been skipped not because he was asleep, but because he was awake? Because he had seen the thing outside his window?
It was far more believable that only one out of a hundred and forty-four people would be awake at three in the morning, than that only one would sleep too soundly to be awakened at five.
That would do for a provisional explanation.
And at the motel, the four of them had fled when he started screaming. That seemed to fit. They preferred sleeping victims, or at least unresisting ones.
The four of them – four monsters?
The Nightmare People Page 3
