Sandy dragged the knife down, trying to open a cut; the T-shirt ripped, and the skin beneath it parted, but the underlying grey flesh oozed thickly and closed up again, leaving only a thin line like an old scar. The thing watched with mild amusement.
“Give me a hand here,” he muttered.
Smith reached over.
“Hold it open,” Sandy said, and he pulled at the knife again.
Smith shoved his fingers into the wound before it could close.
It was like a thick pudding, like wet sand, like shoving his hand into lukewarm mud, and he could feel the stuff oozing between his fingers, and he thrust his other hand in as well, trying to hold back the flow, holding the thing’s shoulder with one knee.
“It won’t hold,” he muttered.
Khalil added his hands, and Sandy stabbed and ripped again, but the wound continued to close, and the thing just smiled at them.
“Having fun?” it asked.
Sandy spat in its face.
Khalil, inspired, spat in the wound.
The healing slowed visibly. The mocking smile vanished. The thing looked almost worried.
“Who goes first?” Smith asked, uneasily.
Khalil shook his head. Sandy started to say something, but then the thing brought a knee up from behind, and he was too busy fighting this sudden attack to waste his breath on words.
Holding his own breath, Smith thrust his head down, between his hands, mouth open, and bit. A chunk of the thing’s flesh tore free in his mouth, a chunk that felt like hard rubber in his mouth.
And Maggie had been right; it tasted like shit.
Only worse.
The thing screamed, and Smith bit again, and chewed, trying hard to ignore the taste, which was the taste of foulness and corruption, like the stink of rotting meat, oily and vile. He ignored the screaming, though it hurt his ears, and he ignored the lights coming on in neighboring houses, and he ignored the churning in his belly, and he sank his teeth into that stinking grey flesh again, and hit something harder, something like clay, something that gleamed black and wet, and he bit into that, too, his teeth scraping through it.
The thing let out the loudest shriek yet, a howl like nothing Smith had ever imagined, like a damned soul in torment, and he almost gagged just from the sound of it.
Then he took another bite, and the scream trailed away into a breathy hissing.
Smith gnawed, and chewed, and forced himself to swallow, and didn’t worry about the clawed fingers scraping his side, or Sandy’s struggles to hold the thing’s legs, or Khalil leaning forward to push the thing’s head back down so it couldn’t bite. The taste and the stench seemed to get worse and worse, and he could only force himself to go on by refusing to think about anything except working his jaws, about biting and chewing and swallowing.
And then he finished the black stuff, and the struggling stopped, and the thing’s hands and head fell back, and Smith dared to rise up for a faceful of fresh air. He opened his eyes – he didn’t remember closing them, but they were tightly shut – and looked down.
The thing was utterly lifeless, a gaping hole in its chest, a hole through thick gray flesh, a hole smeared with viscous, milky fluid, a hole that was no longer trying to heal itself.
It still wore Elias’s skin on its face, but the boy’s features were twisted into a feral, inhuman expression of hatred and terror, the skin pulled back from around the mouth, revealing thin black lips and shining metallic teeth.
Its curled hands still wore Elias’s skin, but long black claws had thrust out from the fingertips. The left, that Khalil had held, was unmarked beyond that; the right, which had raked Smith’s side, was smeared with blood, the skin scraped back from two of the fingertips.
But the creature was dead.
In fact, the creature was rotting away.
That hole that his teeth and the knives had made in its boneless chest was blackening at the edges and growing; reeking black liquid was oozing from the decaying flesh, spilling across the gray gunk, flowing down and filling the bottom of the cavity.
Smith turned away and vomited on the grass, choking up the thing’s substance as best he could, spitting it all out on the lawn.
Khalil rose and stepped away, watching. Sandy fell back off the thing, onto the grass.
When Smith turned back the creature was visibly falling in upon itself; its head was flattening out like a deflating ball, oily black liquid dripping from the nose and mouth and seeping out around the eyes. The limbs had gone limp, and as Smith watched one shoe fell off. The foot that had worn it had withered away to nothing.
The stench of death and decay was overpowering, and Smith’s nausea returned. He gagged, then retched, but had nothing left to bring up.
Sandy got to his feet, staring down at the thing. He spat onto the rotting corpse, spat a gobbet of sputum mixed with blood.
“That’s for Mary, you son of a bitch,” he said, as he wiped his mouth.
Khalil hissed and pointed, and Smith and Sandy looked up to see the beam of a flashlight shining across the bushes in front of the house across the street.
A siren sounded in the distance.
“We better get out of here,” Smith said.
Sandy nodded, and the three of them ran for the car. Sandy limped slightly; Smith ran bent over, trying to minimize the pain from the gashes in his side.
Behind them the shapeless mass and stinking black puddle that had been the nightmare person, the false Elias, were beginning to steam.
Chapter Nine:
Tuesday, August 8th
1.
“One down,” Sandy said, smiling.
“And a hundred and forty-three to go,” Smith responded glumly, closing his hand around his coffee cup.
“Hey, that’s not so many!” Sandy said. “At least we know how many there are!”
“Do we?” Smith asked. “How do we know they don’t reproduce somehow? Vampires could make more vampires, couldn’t they?”
“I don’t know,” Sandy said, “Do you? Could they?” He scowled. “And besides, these things aren’t vampires.”
“Yeah,” Smith said, “and we don’t know what they really are, either. Yeah, we know how to kill them now, but people knew how to kill vampires hundreds of years ago, and they still didn’t get the last one until 1939.”
“That’s what that creep told you,” Sandy said. “You can’t believe the creeps.”
“You killed one?” Annie asked from the doorway. “You’re sure?”
Smith turned. Their hostess was standing there in a pale pink housedress and fuzzy blue slippers. “Good morning,” he said. “Yes, we’re sure. It rotted away to nothing.”
“Not nothing,” Sandy objected. “The skin was still there.”
“That wasn’t part of it,” Smith pointed out.
Sandy shrugged.
“But I thought you intended to… ah…” Annie said.
“Eat it?” Sandy asked.
“We did,” Smith explained, “But we didn’t need to eat all of it. There’s a part where the heart should be that’s black and harder than the rest, and when I ate that it began to melt away.”
“I wish we hadn’t left it there,” Sandy said.
Smith shrugged. “What were we going to do? I mean, its screaming woke up the neighbors, and would you want to explain to them that we were killing monsters on their lawn at three in the morning?”
“Yeah, and what about when the neighbors find Elias’s skin lying there empty?”
Khalil, who had been sitting silently staring at his coffee, shook his head. “The others, from the house,” he said. “They got there first.”
Smith turned and blinked at him. “How’d you know that?” he demanded.
“I saw,” Khalil replied.
“Damn,” Sandy said. “They know we know, then.”
“They’d know anyway,” Smith said.
“Where’s Maggie?” Annie asked, looking about the kitchen.
“Asleep o
n the couch,” Smith replied.
“Oh.” Annie finally left the doorway and entered.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Smith said, a little belatedly remembering his manners, “but we made ourselves some coffee. We’ve been up all night.”
“Oh, that’s fine,” Annie said. She looked around, somewhat puzzled, then went to fetch the corn flakes from a cabinet.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Smith pushed back his chair.
“Oh, no, that’s all right,” she said, “I’ll just have orange juice.”
“Okay.” He settled back down.
Sandy looked at his watch. “I’ll have to call in sick today and then get some sleep,” he said.
Smith nodded. “Me, too,” he said.
“I’d better be getting home.” Sandy pushed back his chair and stood up.
“Hey, wait,” Smith said. “What about the others? We’re going to kill them, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” Sandy agreed.
“When?” Smith asked. “I mean, they seem less active in daylight; shouldn’t we go at it right now?” He waved at the sunlight pouring in through the kitchen window; the clouds had broken up not long after the three men had fled the Samaan house, and the day outside was bright, the sky blue.
Sandy looked at Smith for a moment before replying.
“Look, Smith,” he said, “It’s been a long fuckin’ night, you know? I’m tired. My hand hurts. My jaw hurts. My chest hurts where I got burns. My shirt’s tore up. I haven’t had any sleep in, what, twenty-four hours, at least. I’m going to go home and get some rest, and then I’m going to come back here when I wake up, and then we can go after the fuckers again. You don’t look that good yourself, y’know; are you really in that big a hurry to eat more of that stuff?”
Smith glanced about, and realized that Khalil, too, had stood up.
“No,” Smith said, “No, I guess not. If you go to sleep now you should be up again by late afternoon, right? And you’ll come back here and we’ll still have a couple of hours of full daylight, right?”
“Right,” Sandy said, slapping him on the shoulder. “And Smith, get some sleep yourself, okay? You look like hell.”
“Yeah, sure,” Smith agreed.
Annie had listened to this without comment as she filled a bowl with cornflakes, sugar, and milk, and poured a large glass of juice. Now she looked up and said, “Sleep well, Mr. Niklasen, and you, too, Mr. Saad, and you’re welcome back whenever you like, until you get this all taken care of.”
“Thanks, Annie,” Sandy said as he left.
“Thank you, Mrs. McGowan,” Khalil said as he followed.
Smith stared down at his almost-empty cup.
“Will you be going, too, Mr. Smith?” Annie asked.
“No hurry,” he said. He picked up the cup.
His hand shook.
“Mr. Smith, you’re exhausted, aren’t you?” Annie asked.
He nodded. “I suppose I am,” he said. “I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. One of those things was after me for five nights running, and I haven’t made up for it yet.”
“Are you sure you can drive yourself home safely?”
“Not going home,” Smith told her. “They’re there. I’ve been staying in a motel.”
“Oh, well, that’s no good!” Annie said. “Listen, I have a perfectly good guest room upstairs, and nobody’s using it, since you put poor Maggie on the couch; you go on up and get yourself some sleep! It’s the door on the right at the top of the stairs, next to the bathroom. You go on!”
He looked at her gratefully. “Ms. McGowan, I’d love to, but all my stuff is back at the motel…”
“Well, fooey, so what? They aren’t going to throw it out just because you’re out for the day! You can go get it later. For now you just go right upstairs and get some sleep!”
“Uh… I need to call in sick at work, too, and there won’t be anyone there until nine…”
“Oh, don’t worry about it! Just sleep! Mr. Niklasen was right, you do look awful!”
He nodded, and got unsteadily to his feet.
“On the right?” he said.
“On the right,” she confirmed, “right next to the bathroom.”
The room was pink and lacy and the bed was fluffy and cool, and he barely managed to get his shoes off.
2.
When he awoke it took him a long moment to remember where he was.
The blinds were drawn and the room was dim, all faded pink and soft grey shadows. He lay atop a high four-poster, on a quilted pink comforter, still in his sweat-stained, soiled, and stinking clothes. Around the edges of old-fashioned roller shades light seeped in through layered pink gauze curtains, but failed to really illuminate the room.
The furniture was imitation French Empire, in cream and gilt, while the throw rugs and lampshades and upholstery were dusty rose. A chair stood in each corner, a nightstand on either side of the bed, a vanity table with a triple mirror against one wall.
He sat up, and realized that he felt better than he had in days. He remembered the morning’s discussion around Annie’s breakfast table, and he wondered how long he had slept.
He was still wearing his watch; he looked at it, and saw 5:40.
That was late. He’d slept the whole day away!
He swung his feet off the bed and stood up, and it seemed as if he had those feet planted more firmly than he had in days. A good long sleep, without interruption, had been what he needed.
A shower and a shave and a change of clothes wouldn’t hurt, either, he thought, as he felt his shirt stick to his back.
He wasn’t going to get any of those here, though; his clothes and razor were back at the motel, or in his apartment, and he didn’t want to take a shower and then put the same smelly old clothes back on again.
He wandered out into the hallway and looked down the stairs.
He saw no one, but he thought he heard someone moving quietly about.
“Hello,” he called, “Anybody home?”
A moment later Annie’s head appeared in the archway to the living room.
“Hello, Mr. Smith,” she called. “Feeling any better?”
He nodded. “Much better, thanks.” He started down the stairs.
“I was just trying to decide what to do about dinner,” she said. “I had thought that Mr. Niklasen and Mr. Saad might be here by now, and I didn’t know if they’d have eaten or not – and of course, I didn’t know when you’d be waking up.”
Smith’s stomach growled. “I don’t know about dinner,” he said, “I mean, I don’t want to put you to any trouble, but I could use something to eat.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” Annie said, hurrying into the kitchen. “I’ll just make something for the two of us, and if anyone else turns up… well, I’ll worry about that if it happens.”
Smith knew that the polite thing to do would be to protest further, but his stomach let him know that it wasn’t interested in being polite. “Is there anything I can help with?” he asked.
“Oh, you might start the coffee, if you’ll want any – I’ll be having tea.” Annie was bustling about, closing the oven door and turning knobs, throwing something green in a saucepan and plopping it onto the stove.
“Where’s Maggie?” Smith asked, as he located the coffeemaker.
While he looked about for the coffee, Annie said, “Oh, she went home first thing this morning.”
“Ah,” Smith said. “Where’s the coffee?”
Annie pointed to the cabinet directly above the coffeemaker; he opened it, and a packet of coffee filters fell out onto the counter, revealing a can of Folger’s.
The doorbell chimed.
“I’ll get it,” Annie said, hurrying past him.
Smith busied himself with the coffeemaker, but looked up a moment later to see Khalil and Sandy standing in the hallway. They both wore fresh clothes, reminding him that he did not. Sandy was looking about as if he had never seen the place before.
> Smith slid the coffeepot into place and ambled toward the hall.
“I just now started dinner cooking,” Annie was saying as he approached, “And I can throw a couple more in the oven if you like.”
“That’s all right,” Sandy said, “I already ate.”
“And you, Mr. Saad?”
“I would be pleased to eat with you,” Khalil replied.
“Well, that’s fine, then. It’s nothing fancy, just chicken filets, from a frozen package, you know, I didn’t make it myself. Let me put another in the oven.” She marched into the kitchen, past Smith, and headed for the freezer.
“Hi,” Smith said to the two new arrivals. “I thought you’d be here sooner than this.”
“I thought so, too,” Khalil said. “Sandy said this morning he would come and fetch me, so I waited, but he did not come. So I went and fetched him, and here we are.”
Startled, Smith looked at Sandy.
“I forgot,” Sandy said defensively, “All right? I overslept and I forgot. We’re here now, right? So what does it matter?”
Smith shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, “You’re right. So what’s on for tonight?”
“I don’t know,” Sandy said.
“Are we going back for the other two at the Samaan house?” Smith asked.
Then Sandy’s reply penetrated, and he looked at Sandy more closely.
Up until now, Sandy had always known what he was doing, even when it was entirely the wrong thing. Forgetfulness and oversleeping seemed out of character.
“Are you feeling okay, Sandy?” Smith asked.
“Sure,” Sandy said, “I’m fine.”
Smith’s uneasiness was not allayed.
Sandy had been bitten by the things twice – or actually, by the same one twice, in two separate fights, once on the hand and once inside his mouth. In the discussion after they had killed the creature, Sandy had said it felt as if it had sunk a row of huge needles into the bottom of his mouth, in the soft part just below the gums; the three men had theorized that the things had extensible fangs that gave them a firm grip on their victims while they did whatever it was they did that allowed them to eat their way in.
Did they have some sort of venom, perhaps? Was Sandy poisoned?
The Nightmare People Page 18
