The Nightmare People

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  “Vampires,” he repeated. “The one I talked to said that the last vampire was killed in 1939, in Los Angeles. Fifty years ago. That must have been… well, if they’re a new form for this force, then vampires must have been the last one, the old form.”

  “But vampires were never real!” Sandy Niklasen said.

  “How do we know?” Elias asked. “How do we know that? If they’ve been extinct for fifty years, and they must have been rare for years before that, of course no one believes in them now. People thought that dodos were a hoax for years, after they were extinct. Vampires were real, but we finally killed them off – and now we have these new vampires!”

  “Except they’re different,” Smith pointed out. “They aren’t vampires. They come out in daylight, or at least they can sometimes. They don’t sleep in coffins – as far as I can tell, they don’t sleep at all.”

  “But they’re like vampires,” Elias insisted. “They’re heirs to the vampires – their descendants, more or less.”

  “Sort of the next step in supernatural evolution,” Smith suggested.

  Elias nodded enthusiastically, and rose to his feet. “They are,” he said, “That’s it exactly! They’re the next step in evolution! The vampires got wiped out, unfit to survive, so something else has come along to fit the ecological niche they left vacant!”

  “So if we kill them all,” Maggie said, “Something else will come along and take their place?”

  Elias nodded. “Yeah, of course!” he said.

  “But not right away,” Smith pointed out. “It took fifty years for these things to appear. If we wipe them out, we might be safe for another fifty years…”

  “Safe,” Khalil said. “Safe, like this past fifty years? World war, nuclear bombs, safe?”

  “Yeah, safe,” Sandy said. “Which would you rather live with, monsters that’ll eat you in your sleep, or the same stuff we’ve always lived with?”

  “I wonder,” Maggie said, “I wonder if there’s a connection? I mean, if these things are made out of evil, doesn’t that evil have to come from somewhere? Won’t it be… I mean, is it the same evil that’s been around loose in the world since 1939?”

  “Evil was loose in the world long before 1939,” Annie pointed out.

  “But some times have been worse than others,” Maggie said, “And maybe the better times were when all the evil was being used by creatures – so when there were vampires, there wouldn’t be world wars, maybe?”

  “Hitler came to power in 1933, honey,” Annie said. “And he was a monster all along. World War II didn’t happen all at once.”

  “But how many vampires were left, by then?” Maggie persisted. “Maybe when there were a lot of vampires, we got peace, like… like…” She stopped, puzzled.

  “We’ve never had peace,” Smith said. “There have always been wars and atrocities. I don’t think there’s any law of conservation of evil.”

  Sandy shifted in his chair. “Look, I don’t care about all this theory,” he said. “I just want to deal with the thing that you say is pretending to be my old lady. You claim that these nightmare people killed her and ate her?”

  Smith nodded. “I think so,” he said.

  “Then I’m gonna kill the sons of bitches. Now, how do we do that?”

  Smith looked at Maggie, who shrugged; he turned toward Elias, but Annie interrupted.

  “You all can hold it right there,” she said. “Those things may be monsters, but I don’t want any part of some vigilante attack on them. I won’t stop you, but I don’t want any part of it, and I won’t have you planning it here in my house. I still say it’s a job for the police, and tomorrow morning I intend to call ’em. I’d advise the rest of you to just wait and see whether they can handle this, before you go and do anything foolish!”

  Sandy stood up. “Lady, the cops ain’t gonna do a fuckin’ thing.” He marched toward the door.

  “Sandy, wait!” Smith called. He turned to Annie. “Ms. McGowan, thanks for your hospitality, but I’ve got to be going now. Is anyone else coming?”

  Elias jumped up.

  Smith nodded. “Wait for us, Sandy,” he said.

  Together, the three men left the house.

  2.

  “A stake through the heart,” Elias said from the back seat.

  “They aren’t vampires,” Smith said again.

  “Yeah, I know,” Elias said, “but Ed, a stake through the heart’ll kill anything! Would you be getting up again if we put a piece of wood through your heart?”

  “No,” Smith acknowledged, “But I wouldn’t be getting up again after somebody shot me through the throat, either.”

  “You got a better idea?” Sandy demanded.

  “No,” Smith admitted.

  “Then I say we try it,” Sandy said. “The kid’s right; nothing gets up again with a stake through the heart.”

  Smith still had misgivings. “Look,” he said, “I think it’ll take more than that.”

  “Sure!” Elias said. “Like in the books. Cut off the head and stuff the mouth with garlic.”

  “Cut off the head?” Sandy asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “With what?”

  “Uh… doesn’t matter, as far as I know,” Elias said.

  “Garlic?” Smith asked. The one in his apartment had said the same thing, about cutting off a vampire’s head and stuffing the mouth with garlic, but it still sounded stupid.

  “Well, that’s what worked with vampires,” Elias said, a bit defensively.

  “Elias, they aren’t vampires,” Smith said.

  “But they’re related!” Elias insisted. He saw the expression on Smith’s face, and said, “Hey, what can it hurt to try?”

  “I don’t know,” Smith replied. “That’s what worries me.”

  “So what do we need, then?” Sandy asked. “A stake, and a hammer, and a bunch of garlic, and something to cut off the head…”

  “An axe, maybe,” Smith suggested. He remembered how quickly the bulletholes had closed up, and he wanted something that would cut fast. “What kind of stake? I mean, just a chunk of two-by-four with a point, or does it have to be some special wood?”

  “Oak, ash, or thorn, I think it is,” Elias said.

  That sounded more like something to do with druids than with vampires to Smith, but he didn’t argue.

  “Hardwoods,” Sandy remarked.

  “We can find oak pretty easily,” Smith said, waving at a tree by the roadside. “Just cut a branch and put a point on it.”

  “We gonna do this today?” Sandy asked.

  Elias and Smith looked at each other. “I don’t know,” Smith said. “I’d want to do it by daylight.”

  “It’s three o’clock now, and the sun sets at what, seven thirty? Eight o’clock?” Sandy said. “That’s five hours. What say we get on with it, then?”

  Smith looked at Elias; he was a little pale, but he nodded.

  “All right,” Smith said, turning the wheel. “An axe first, to cut the stake, and a bunch of garlic; anything else?”

  “A sledge,” Sandy said, “Maybe six pounds.”

  “And a cross,” Elias said. “My grandmother’s got a silver cross in her jewelry box.”

  Sandy sneered, but said nothing.

  “Right,” Smith said, as he stepped on the gas. “Hechinger’s first, then, for the axe and sledge.”

  3.

  About ninety minutes later they stopped at the Roy Rogers on Route 124 to eat and plan. Their purchases stayed in Smith’s car. So did the freshly-cut two-foot length of oak, one end sharpened and the other blunt.

  “We need to get one of them alone,” Smith said, putting down his burger. “We can’t take on all of them at once.”

  “Which one? Where?” Elias asked. “How do we do that?”

  “The one that got Mary,” Sandy said. “The one that’s pretending to be her – that’s the one we start with.”

  Smith was momentarily unsettled by the idea of driving a stake
through a woman’s heart, but then he reconsidered.

  The things weren’t human. It wasn’t a woman, it was a monster in a woman’s shape. He nodded. “All right,” he said, “One’s as good as another, as far as I’m concerned. But how do we get her alone?”

  “That’s easy,” Sandy said. “I call her up and ask her to meet me somewhere. She’s still pretending to be Mary; she doesn’t know I’m onto her. So she comes, and we grab her, and we do it.”

  “Where?” Smith asked.

  “Where I’m staying, of course,” Sandy said. “My roommate’s out for the weekend.”

  “What if she screams, and the neighbors hear?”

  Sandy looked annoyed. “Yeah,” he said, “That could be a problem.” He looked at Elias.

  Elias shook his head. “My folks are home.”

  Smith said, “And I’m living in a motel.”

  “There’s the woods along Barrett Road,” Sandy said. “So long as we don’t give her a chance to get away.”

  “We can surround her,” Smith said.

  Elias chewed slowly for a moment, then said, “Vampires were supposed to have the strength of ten men. There’s only three of us.”

  “Ten men, hah!” Sandy said. “Mary was only five-one. If the three of us can’t handle a five-one broad, we’re in pretty piss-poor shape.”

  “But it’s not really a woman,” Smith said.

  “It’s still only five-one and ninety pounds,” Sandy replied.

  Smith looked at Elias; Elias shrugged. “I guess you’re right,” he said, “But I wish there were more of us.”

  “What do you expect from a bunch of women?” Sandy said.

  “There’s Khalil,” Smith said.

  Sandy just stared, and Smith decided not to argue.

  “We could call them,” he said, “And see if any have changed their minds.”

  “Okay,” Sandy said. “But if any of them call the cops, it ain’t my fault.”

  Smith nodded; Elias shrugged.

  “Let’s do it, then,” Sandy said.

  4.

  They picked Khalil and Maggie up at Annie McGowan’s house a few minutes after five. Sandy recovered his own car, a black Mercury, and Khalil rode with him, while Elias and Maggie rode with Smith. The Newells were long gone, and Annie herself wanted nothing to do with their vigilantism, but Khalil and Maggie both wanted in.

  Sandy made his call from the pay-phone outside the 7-Eleven on Townsend.

  “Hey, Mare!” he said.

  The others couldn’t hear the reply.

  “It’s me, Sandy. Look, I’m sorry for the things I said last time, okay? Can we talk about it?”

  He listened for a moment.

  “No, really, I want us to get back together, okay? I love you, Mare – no shit, I really do. So can we talk somewhere? In person?”

  Maggie kicked nervously at the sidewalk.

  “Naw, Bob’s around, and I want it private. Look, how about you meet me at the north end of the dam, on Barrett Road, and we can walk in the woods, just you and me and Mother Nature, okay?”

  Smith looked over at Khalil; he seemed calm, like Sandy, while Elias and Maggie were obviously nervous.

  “Seven thirty? Can’t you make it any sooner?”

  Smith couldn’t hear the false Mary’s reply, but he saw Sandy wince and guessed it wasn’t exactly polite agreement.

  “Okay, okay,” Sandy said. “Seven thirty, then. See you there!” He hung up.

  “All set, you guys,” he called.

  “Seven thirty?” Smith asked.

  Sandy shrugged. “Best I could do.”

  “It’ll be getting on toward sunset by then,” Elias pointed out.

  Sandy shrugged. “Hey, what can I do?”

  No one had an answer to that.

  That left them a couple of hours; Maggie and Khalil hadn’t eaten any supper as yet, so they made their next stop the Wendy’s on Diamond Park Avenue.

  When they emerged, around six thirty, the sky had clouded over; as they climbed back into the two cars the rumble of distant thunder reached them.

  “Lovely weather,” Sandy remarked.

  They needed twenty minutes of the remaining hour to get out to the dam and find a spot to hide Smith’s Chevy, up around the curve out of sight.

  The walk back to the dam would take perhaps five minutes, but nobody was in any hurry to make it, as the sky was dark and the rumbling more frequent now.

  “Lovely weather,” Sandy repeated sarcastically. Khalil made no reply, and the other three, huddled in Smith’s Chevy, didn’t hear him.

  About ten past seven the storm finally broke, and rain spilled down heavily, but in the way of summer storms it was over quickly; ten minutes after it had begun, the downpour stopped.

  When the rain stopped Smith and Elias and Maggie emerged cautiously from the Chevy and began the walk back to the appointed meeting place, while Sandy got the Mercury turned around and headed back. The ground was damp beneath their feet, and crickets shrilled on all sides.

  When Sandy and his passenger reached the agreed-upon spot the other three were waiting for them.

  “I just hope she isn’t early,” Smith said, as Sandy and Khalil climbed out.

  “I just hope she shows,” Sandy said. “When I phoned it was still sunny and warm, and now look at it.” He gestured at the dark grey skies.

  Maggie shuddered slightly.

  “I’ll wait here,” Sandy said. “The rest of you get out of sight.”

  Smith nodded, and led the other four off the road, back among the trees, well away from the road, so that whatever they did wouldn’t be seen.

  Then they waited.

  “This is stupid,” Maggie finally said from behind an oak, “Even if she comes. She’ll see us!”

  “No, she won’t,” Elias answered. “I don’t think they see very well in sunlight.”

  “What sunlight, Elias?” Maggie asked. “I can’t even tell whether the sun’s still up there behind those clouds or already set.”

  “Shut up!” Sandy called from the roadside. “I can hear you from here, and that’s her car coming!”

  A battered old Volkswagen pulled up onto the sandy shoulder; Smith could just make it out through the shadows and foliage. Someone got out, a petite blonde in denim shorts and a red halter and broad-brimmed straw sun-hat – she obviously hadn’t let a little summer shower bother her enough to make her change clothes. Sandy talked to her, and she answered him, but none of the others could make out what was said.

  Then the pair of them walked down into the forest, away from the road, toward where the others waited. Smith clutched the oaken stake; he was sweating, more than the lingering warmth of a summer evening could account for. He glanced over to where Khalil held the four-pound sledgehammer they had bought – on Smith’s charge card – earlier that afternoon.

  The little blonde’s voice reached Smith. “…I’m not still mad at you, I just don’t think I’m ready to get back together.”

  Wet leaves rustled as the pair walked, and the crickets sang wildly.

  “Mare,” Sandy said, “What’s to be ready? I mean, it’s not like it was the first time, or anything. We lived together for over a year, right? So we already know each other. We know what we’re doing.” He had an arm around her shoulders as they walked, his other arm swinging free.

  Then, suddenly, the arm around her shoulders was around her throat, choking her; he lifted her off her feet and threw her to the ground, then knelt astride her chest, pinning her arms with his knees.

  She looked surprised, but didn’t resist.

  Smith swallowed bile and stepped forward, out of concealment, a little voice in the back of his mind shouting at him, she’s a woman, an innocent, this is wrong, it’s murder!

  Khalil emerged, and Elias, and Maggie, and the four of them surrounded Sandy and his prisoner. She looked up at them and suddenly screamed, “Rape! Help! Rape!”

  With a curse, Sandy thrust his fist in her mouth to st
op the screams, but as he did he felt a hundred sharp, sharp points prick at his knuckles from either side, like hot needles. His own mouth came open, but no sound emerged; he tried to pull his hand back and couldn’t.

  The screaming was stopped, but his hand was being maimed, he could feel it, the razor-sharp points drilling into his hand, into the tendons, the pressure of her jaws forcing his own fingernails into his palm.

  He slapped at her with his free hand, and felt her skin shift at impact, loose from the flesh beneath.

  “Let go, bitch!” he shouted.

  She smiled, around his hand – except that one side of her mouth didn’t work right, where he had slapped at her, the skin slid loosely and sagged, and something dark grey, almost black, showed underneath, something that looked like a dog’s gum, twisted upward in a leer. The eye on that side gleamed red, while the other was still Mary’s familiar blue.

  “You killed her, bitch, you aren’t her,” Sandy shrieked. “Let go of my hand, goddamn it!”

  Then Elias was there, with the axe, threatening her with it. She let go suddenly, and Sandy’s hand came free. He fell backward, blood spraying from the dozens of punctures.

  “Jesus!” he said, looking at it.

  Blood was flowing freely now, winding around his thumb and down his wrist and arm in a steady stream; he clutched at the wounds with his left hand, trying to stem the flow. He could feel each individual puncture, each one stinging, each as if a nail had been driven into him.

  Maggie was beside him, looking around helplessly for something to use as a bandage, and Smith was holding out the oaken stake. Sandy looked down at the thing that had bitten him, the thing that had pretended to be Mary, the thing he was still half-sitting on, and he spat at it.

  It grinned at him, and he could see the long silver needle-teeth, each one tipped in bright red; one eye was equally red, the other still human and blue. The skin – Mary’s skin – had pulled away from the jaws completely now, and the chin was hanging loose on the thing’s neck, while the upper lip was wrinkled across the bottom of its nose, like a thrown-back bedsheet. In between, the jaws were dark grey, corded with heavy muscle, like ropes of thick clay. The thing’s own lips were thin and black, not at all like Mary’s lush red mouth.