The Nightmare People

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Startled, he spun to face the windows, and then, realizing where he was, he spun again, looking first back out into the stairwell, and then down the little hallway to the bedroom.

  Nothing.

  He swung the door closed, and listened carefully to be sure it latched. Then he marched across the room and peeped out through the drapes, the gun held up, pointing at the ceiling, the way the actors always held their guns on all those cop shows on TV.

  Elias was looking up at him through his car’s sloping windshield; the boy waved.

  Smith waved back.

  That had almost certainly been his own car’s horn he’d heard; Elias had beeped at him about something. The wave had been calm, though, not a signal that something was wrong.

  Well, he’d figure it out later.

  He crossed to the kitchen, put the gun down on the counter, and picked up the phone. The Goodwins’ number was written in felt tip on the edge of the memo pad he kept there; he read it over, then dialed.

  On the third ring, someone answered. “Hello?” said a familiar childish voice.

  “Sid?” he said.

  He hadn’t thought of that. Monster or no, he didn’t think he could shoot a little kid. Sid was… the real Sid had been eight.

  “This is Sidney Goodwin; who’s this?”

  “This is Mr. Smith, upstairs in C41.” He couldn’t face Sid. Nor ten-year-old Harry nor twelve-year-old – or was it thirteen? – Jessie. “Is Bill around?”

  “Yeah, he is; do you want to talk to him?”

  “No, but if he’s not busy, I could use a hand moving some of this stuff up here.”

  “Hang on a minute, Mr. Smith.” A series of bumps came over the line, and then voices, too low to make out the words, and then the Sid thing came back on.

  “He’ll be right up, Mr. Smith. He’ll knock.”

  “Thanks, Sid.”

  He hung up.

  The imitation Bill Goodwin would be right up. His target was on its way, about to walk right in.

  He picked up the gun, and then looked around the living room, trying to decide where he should stand.

  Then he felt the weight of the pistol, and thought about recoil and whether his hands might shake, and he decided he didn’t want to stand anywhere.

  Instead he sat down in the back corner, leaning back against the wall with his knees up, facing the door. He took the gun firmly in both hands and pointed it at the door.

  That should work.

  He lowered the gun.

  A moment later he heard footsteps coming up the stairs, followed by a knock on the door.

  “Come in,” he called, “It’s open!”

  He lifted the gun.

  3.

  For a moment, as he squeezed the trigger, everything seemed to freeze. The door stopped in its swing, the expression on the Goodwin thing’s face set suddenly, even his hands stopped trembling.

  Then his eyes closed and the gun went off.

  The bang was startling, and loud, but not ear-splitting. The smell of powder was sharp, but not unpleasant. The recoil was like a solid punch against his braced hands, but no worse than that.

  The biggest surprise was the rattling that followed the shot.

  He opened his eyes to see Bill Goodwin still standing there, looking down at him, his face expressionless.

  Smith blinked.

  Then the Goodwin thing grinned, revealing those silvery needle-teeth, more teeth than any human mouth ever held, hundreds of them, Smith was certain.

  He must have missed. When he had panicked and closed his eyes the gun must have jerked to the side and he must have missed.

  Then he saw the half-inch hole in Goodwin’s T-shirt, the hole through the crossbar of the T in Metallica, the hole that was not bleeding, but slowly oozing something thick and greyish-black, something with the color of ash and the texture of mucilage.

  Even as he watched, the oozing stopped, and the gunk seemed to be visibly hardening, hardening into new grey flesh.

  The nightmare thing was grinning at him, with those hideous gleaming teeth, and its eyes were red and glowing from deep within its disguise of human skin.

  “That’s the second hole you’ve put in this skin,” it said, in a normal conversational tone. “At this rate it isn’t going to last much longer.” It ran a long, inhumanly narrow, inhumanly pointed black tongue around its lips, and Smith could see those human lips being pushed back, revealing something shiny and black and wet underneath.

  “I might need to get another if you keep this up,” it said, in Bill Goodwin’s voice. “They don’t heal.”

  Smith raised the gun again and tried to fix the wavering barrel on the center of the thing’s chest.

  It turned its head, looking back out at the hallway, ignoring the pistol. It reached up with its left hand, feeling behind its right shoulder.

  “Make that the second and third holes,” it said. “The bullet came out the back. I think I heard it hit the wall.”

  Smith remembered the rattle, and his jaw sagged, but he raised the gun and fired again.

  This time he didn’t flinch, didn’t blink. He saw the nightmare thing stagger back as the bullet took it in the throat. He heard the sharp crack as the bullet shattered the hallway skylight, and saw the hallway brighten as sunlight spilled through the new opening, unimpeded by the dirt that had been layered on the glass. Small shards of glass sprinkled across the wall and floor.

  Then the thing stood straight again, still grinning, as the same grey ooze seeped from the new wound.

  “You’re aiming high,” it said, but its voice was no longer exactly Bill Goodwin’s – at least the bullet through its neck had done that much. “I think you forgot to compensate for the recoil.” It took a step toward him.

  He pressed back against the wall, tensing for a struggle.

  The moment had come. Elias had been right; the gun was useless. The thing was going to eat him.

  He took a breath, getting ready to scream, to fight, to sell his life as dearly as he could.

  “Now,” it said, “did you really have something you wanted moved, or was that just a trick to get me up here?”

  Smith gaped.

  The thing just stood there, grinning.

  Smith gulped, tried to speak, couldn’t manage it.

  Then, abruptly recovering his senses, he lunged forward, scrambled to his feet, and dove toward the doorway, shoving his way past the thing.

  It made no move to stop him. He reached the doorway, stumbled through it, and headed for the stairs.

  Coming up the stairs, looking up at him from the landing, was another of the nightmare people, this one undisguised by human skin. It looked up, its grey face and gleaming teeth and red eyes plainly visible for an instant, and then it looked down again, like a shy child, its face hidden by the blue-black slouch hat it wore.

  Its hands were thrust deep into the pockets of an old raincoat, its body completely covered; with its head down it could pass for human – or for a mannequin.

  Smith realized that he was between two of the things, but before he could think about that he was running down the stairs. He slammed the creature on the landing back against the wall and pushed past before it could grab him.

  Its hands came out of the pockets as he did, though, long, bony hands, gnarled grey flesh strung tight across bone, with long glistening black nails at each fingertip.

  He felt one nail tear at the back of his shirt, and then he was past it and running down the stairs.

  Elias saw him coming, saw him running in panic, and started the car – he was already in the driver’s seat, and Smith had left the key in the ignition. With the engine running, he leaned over and opened the door on the passenger side.

  Smith stumbled and almost fell on the steps down to the parking lot, but he caught himself and ran the rest of the way to the car. He threw the gun to the floor and dove in.

  Before he could even get his right foot inside, Elias was backing the car out of its space; b
y the time Smith closed the door, Elias was struggling with the gearshift, trying to get it into Drive.

  Minutes later, as Elias cruised slowly down Barrett Road, Smith finally caught his breath.

  4.

  “So did it work?” Elias asked.

  Smith shook his head. “No,” he said. “You might as well go home and put the gun away.”

  Elias shook his head. “Not right away; I’ll have to clean it, first. And you’ll want to wash your hands with a real strong soap, Lava or something like that – to get the powder grains out. I should’ve told you to wear gloves.”

  Smith looked at his hands; they were a trifle unsteady, but he didn’t see anything else abnormal at first.

  Then he looked more closely. Were there faint black smudges?

  He rubbed, but they didn’t come out.

  “Do you think maybe silver bullets would help?” Elias asked, clumsily negotiating the corner of Townsend Road.

  Before Smith could answer, a horn honked, and Elias jumped slightly. He started to pull over.

  “I think you better drive,” he said. “I don’t have my license yet.”

  Smith stared at him.

  “Hey, I’ve got a learner’s permit,” Elias said, defensively. “It’s legal, as long as you’re in the car with me. I’m just not used to this car. It doesn’t handle like my dad’s Ford.”

  “Stop there, then,” Smith said, pointing to the parking lot of a 7-Eleven.

  He wasn’t in the best of shape to drive, either, but if anybody was going to wreck his car, he preferred to do it himself.

  Elias obeyed, and climbed out. Smith slid over, while Elias went around the front of the car.

  When they were both belted in, Smith headed the Chevy out of the lot.

  As he waited for a break in traffic, Elias asked again, “What about silver bullets?”

  Smith was trying hard not to think about nightmare people, trying hard to concentrate on his driving. He didn’t want to think about whether silver bullets would work.

  “Where would we get the silver?” he asked. “How would we make the bullets?”

  Elias pondered this for a moment. They had gotten out of the parking lot and were turning right onto Willow Street when he said, “Well, in the movies, they just melt down jewelry, and make the bullets in a mold…”

  Smith threw him a glance. “You got any silver jewelry? Real silver, not plate?”

  “Ah… no, but there’s a jeweler at Lakeforest Mall…”

  “There are jewelers all over; all right, so we could buy silver chains or something. But how would we make the bullets?”

  “Well, you melt down the silver…”

  “In what? You have an electric crucible somewhere? I don’t. I haven’t seen one since I toured the engineering lab back in college.”

  Elias thought, and suggested, “What about an oven? I mean, how hot… no, I guess not, huh?”

  “Ever left silverware in the oven?”

  “No, and besides, ours isn’t silver, it’s stainless steel, but I get your point. But we could get…”

  “And what about a mold?” Smith said, interrupting.

  “Well, I don’t have one, but aren’t there hobbyists who make their own bullets?”

  “Sure, there are – but I’m not one of them, and neither are you, and I don’t know where to find them, and doesn’t it seem to you that this is all going to one hell of a lot of trouble and expense for something neither of us really believes will work?”

  Elias opened his mouth, then closed it again. Smith turned onto Diamond Park Avenue.

  “You don’t think it’ll work?” Elias asked at last.

  Smith shook his head. “I don’t know. I saw those wounds close up, and I don’t see why it would make any difference if the bullets had been silver instead of lead. I mean, they went right through.”

  Elias didn’t answer, and after a moment Smith looked over to see what his passenger was doing.

  Elias was staring at him, that was what he was doing.

  “What’s your problem?” Smith snapped.

  “They went right through?” Elias asked. “What… I mean, what happened? You didn’t say, and I’d sort of thought that the bullets just, you know, vanished, like in the movies or something…”

  Smith snorted. His terror was completely gone now, worn away by the reassuring normality of driving. “I keep telling you, this isn’t some damn horror movie!” he said.

  He drove on for a moment, then continued, “I shot it twice. The first time the bullet went through its chest, not right in the center, but up toward the right shoulder, and it came out the back and ricocheted around the stairwell. It left a hole in the shirt and… and the skin, and this grey slimy stuff filled up the hole and sealed it, like… like caulk or something. Then I thought it was going to kill me, so I fired again, and got it in the throat, and that one… well, I aimed high, or it got deflected or something, and went out through the skylight.”

  “And that one closed up the same way?”

  Smith nodded. “Exactly the same. Except I think maybe its voice sounded a little different afterward. And then I ran for it, and there was another one on the stairs but I got past it okay.”

  “God,” Elias said, “you must’ve been scared shitless. How did… what did it do when you shot it?”

  Smith shuddered at the memory. “It smiled at me, with those teeth.”

  “God,” Elias repeated.

  “Yeah,” Smith agreed. “Let’s take the gun back where we got it, all right?”

  “All right,” Elias agreed. He glanced down regretfully at the pistol, lying on the floor of the car.

  Smith reviewed the afternoon’s events, trying to recall if there was anything else he should tell Elias. Something occurred to him, not to tell, but to ask. “Hey,” he said, “Why’d you beep the horn?”

  “Oh,” Elias said, “Well, that was because I thought I saw something climbing out of your bedroom window.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, something climbed out. It didn’t look human, exactly, sort of like a big spider. It climbed down and then it went into one of the windows the next floor down. I didn’t really get a good look at it, and it was gone by the time you came to the window, so I figured it was too late to do anything about it.”

  Smith blinked, and puzzled over that, trying to make it make sense.

  The idea that came to mind at once was that the thing that had been in his apartment when Einar called actually had been there today, and had somehow slipped out the window and gotten away, so as not to confront him.

  But why didn’t it want to confront him?

  And Elias said it had looked like a spider, not like a person, when it crawled down the side of the building.

  Could the things change shape?

  Like vampires?

  And what could kill them, if bullets couldn’t? Holy water? A stake through the heart? Sunlight couldn’t, obviously, although they didn’t really seem to like it much.

  Had that thing he met on the stairs been his own familiar haunt, coming back up the steps by more normal means to investigate the gunshots?

  He had so many questions, and so few answers, and no way to learn more.

  Or was there really no way?

  He was considering this as he pulled up in front of the Samaan house on Amber Crescent.

  There might be one way to find out more about the things.

  He could ask them.

  5.

  He drove back to the motel alone. He had told Elias to call if he had any news, or any ideas about how the creatures could be fought – but right now, he had no idea what the two of them could do, so there was no point in driving about aimlessly together.

  Elias had agreed, a bit reluctantly.

  They had to know more about the things before they could fight them effectively, that was all there was to it.

  Once he was back in his motel room, he first checked to make sure that the maid hadn’t disturbed
any of his belongings.

  She hadn’t, nor had anyone else.

  Reassured, he sat down on the bed and reached for the phone. He took a deep breath, and then dialed his own number.

  He held the receiver to his ear. He heard the buzz that meant the phone in his apartment was ringing, and then someone picked up.

  “Hello?” said a voice, a voice that was oddly familiar. He thought for a moment, and realized that it sounded not like his own voice as he ordinarily heard it, but as he had heard it on recordings. When he had called his own phone at work to test the answering machine, his taped message had sounded exactly like this.

  It must be how he sounded to other people. The thing had his voice.

  “Hello,” Smith said, “Who is this?”

  “You dialed this number,” that familiar voice said. “Don’t you know who I am?”

  Smith could almost hear the creature smirking.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I know who you are, I guess. Or at least who you’re pretending to be. I don’t know what you are, though.”

  The thing on the other end of the line snickered.

  It was a really hideous snicker. Smith wondered if he ever sounded like that when he laughed; he fervently hoped not. He hesitated, trying to think how he should phrase his questions, how he could get the nightmare to tell him what he wanted to know.

  The snickering died away, and the silence grew awkward, but Smith couldn’t get his questions out.

  “Did you want something?” the thing asked at last, “or did you just call to taunt me?”

  Smith blinked. “Taunt you?” he asked.

  “I shouldn’t have said that,” the creature said hastily.

  “But you did say it,” Smith said. “What do you mean, taunt you?”

  “With the fact that you’re still alive, of course. I should have gotten you on Lammas Night. Damn stupid air conditioner!”

  Hearing his own voice say that sent a chill down Smith’s spine. “I…” he began, then froze.

  A thought trickled into the back of his mind – who was taunting whom? The creature might well be very much aware of the effect its words created, the revulsion its seemingly casual manner evoked.