The Nightmare People

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  Annie nodded, not looking up from her work.

  “I expect the one that’s pretending to be Katie may turn up and try to convince me it’s all a misunderstanding, and we should kiss and make up,” she said. “Won’t do it, though, not unless it forces me.”

  Khalil and Smith stared at each other.

  “I wonder,” Smith said. “Once the larva’s in there, do you think there’s any way to stop it?”

  “The doctors have things that pump out stomachs, yes?”

  Smith nodded. “Yeah, a stomach pump might work,” he said, “I don’t know. These aren’t normal parasites, after all; they’re supernatural.”

  “There are none anywhere yet,” Khalil pointed out. “Should we not try to stop any from getting anywhere?”

  “Yes,” Smith agreed, “We should. And I know which one, too – the one that got Sandy said that the one that got Elias’s father was the one that had originally been after me. I think it’s time we finished off that whole fake family over there.”

  Khalil nodded.

  “Will the two of us be enough, do you think?” he asked.

  “We’re all we’ve got,” Smith said. “We’d better be. We’ll be catching it off-guard, I hope, and during the daylight, and there will be two of us to the one of it – we managed okay with the fake Sandy.”

  Khalil nodded again. “We go now, then?”

  “Yes,” Smith said, “We go now.” He stood up.

  Khalil rose as well.

  “Oh, one thing,” Smith said, pausing. “This time, Khalil, you eat it.”

  4.

  Breaking into a locked house in broad daylight was a new experience for Smith, but with his crowbar it wasn’t particularly difficult. The back door of the Samaan house gave way easily.

  He just hoped none of the neighbors had noticed anything.

  Most of them were probably at work, he figured, or otherwise out for the day – it was late morning, almost eleven. And the others would probably be sitting inside, watching TV. The weather was beautiful, sunny and pleasantly cool – but who noticed that on a weekday morning?

  And in August, people might not want to be out when it was this cool.

  Despite the temperature, forcing the door had been enough to work up a little sweat. Smith stepped inside, with Khalil at his heels.

  They were in the living room, where they had fled after burning the skin off the false Hanna Samaan, and it appeared that no one had bothered to move a thing since then. A few spatters of dried blood, Sandy’s blood, still spotted the carpet in an uneven line from the foyer to the deck; black flakes of ash were scattered everywhere, and the room stank of lighter fluid and smoke.

  It felt deserted.

  Smith tried to ignore that feeling; after all, the nightmare people weren’t human. They wouldn’t necessarily be tidy housekeepers. They were kin to vampires, which had traditionally dwelt in ruins and decay.

  Even so, the air in this house felt undisturbed and empty. It wasn’t just the ash or the blood or the smell, but something subtle and undefineable.

  Khalil carefully slid the door closed, and then drew the heavy carving knife from his belt. Smith equally carefully placed the crowbar on the floor and drew his own blade.

  They stepped forward, watching all sides. Staying together, they crossed to the foyer.

  The ash was thicker here, and scorched remnants of Hanna Samaan’s housedress lay on the tile floor. One blue terrycloth slipper leaned against a wall; there was no sign of its mate.

  Smith backed up into the living room, then led the way into the kitchen.

  It was as deserted as the living room. Likewise the dining room and the den and the powder room.

  Then it was Khalil’s turn to lead, up the stairs and through all the three bedrooms and the two bathrooms, and into the long, narrow walk-in closet over the garage.

  One room was clearly Elias’s, equipped with a cheap component stereo and racks of unsorted tapes and records. A Pauli Girl beer poster adorned the closet door; a shelf over the bed held a dozen paperbacks by Stephen King and Robert Heinlein, and a larger volume entitled The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, by Michael Weldon. The bed itself was unmade, and a line of cookie crumbs had collected along a crease in the bottom sheet. An old roll-top desk was awash in papers, notebooks, and junk, with a Batman comic book on top. Three pairs of jeans were on the floor.

  Also on the floor was a blackened, stinking bundle that upon investigation was discovered to be the clothes the false Elias had been wearing when Smith, Sandy, and Khalil had cut it open and eaten its heart. The skin itself was gone.

  Smith looked up from where he squatted over the clothes. “What happened to Mary’s skin?” he asked. “Sandy had it over at Annie’s house, that night – what happened to it?”

  Khalil shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sandy had it. Why does it matter?”

  “Because that would be hard evidence to show the police that there’s something strange going on, at the very least.”

  “Perhaps that is why the thing chose Sandy as its victim yesterday, then.”

  Smith nodded. “I was thinking that,” he said.

  “We have Sandy’s skin,” Khalil pointed out.

  That was true. After cleaning up the couch they had left the skin in Annie’s basement, soaking in the laundry room sink to get off the rest of the slime.

  “It’s kind of torn up, though,” Smith said.

  Khalil shrugged. “Mary’s was torn up, too,” he said.

  Smith nodded and stood up. “Come on,” he said.

  They moved on.

  Things were neater in the adjoining bathroom, save that the cap was off the toothpaste.

  The second bedroom was the guest room. The bed was made, and covered with an old country quilt. A shelf of knicknacks hung between the two windows. Everything was exactly where it belonged. The shades were drawn, and a thin layer of dust covered everything.

  The master bedroom was much larger, and somewhere between the artificial and dusty perfection of the guest room and the adolescent chaos of Elias’s room. The dresser was cluttered with cosmetics, including the biggest bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion that Smith had ever seen. The bed was unmade, but the floor was clear and no crumbs could be seen.

  It also smelled better than Elias’s.

  It was just as deserted, though.

  Only after they had checked the master bath and the oversized closet did Smith notice the note on the dresser mirror. A page from a yellow legal pad had been slipped into the crack between the mirror and its frame.

  He leaned over and read it.

  “You didn’t really think I was stupid enough to stay here after you got the other two, did you?” he read.

  It was signed, “Joe Samaan 2nd.”

  Smith ripped it from the mirror and was about to tear it up, when he realized there was more writing on the back. He turned it over.

  “Ed Smith: You’ve really made my life difficult, you know. If you hadn’t been awake at three a.m., when you had no business being awake, I’d have gotten you that first night and it would all be over. Now I have to settle for skins I was never grown to fit, and they ITCH.”

  This time there was no signature.

  Smith took great satisfaction in tearing the paper into tiny bits and scattering them about the room.

  5.

  Exhaustion conquered frustration, and Smith slept from noon until shortly after six.

  Khalil was still asleep when Smith came downstairs, and Smith didn’t disturb him.

  Annie was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper and sipping tea.

  “Hello,” she said. “I’d say good morning, but it’s almost time for supper.”

  Smith nodded. “Yeah, hello,” he said. He sat down heavily on the nearest chair.

  Annie sipped her tea.

  After a moment of silence, Smith burst out, “There must be some way to get them all!”

  Annie looked up from th
e paper. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It took three hundred years to kill all the vampires, if I heard that one here correctly; why do you think you can get all the nightmare people in a week?”

  “Because it’s still early,” he said, “They aren’t really established yet. And they aren’t vampires, anyway – they’re worse. If they can really double their numbers every month, they can take over the world in, I don’t know, a couple of years, probably. Say a hundred this month, two hundred the next, four hundred, eight, sixteen, thirty-two by January – three thousand two hundred, that’s half of Diamond Park. Six thousand in February, twelve thousand in March, a hundred thousand by next June, a million and a half by October of next year, six million by 1991 – Christ, we’re doomed if we don’t get them all now.”

  “But they won’t really spread that fast,” Annie said. “After all, lots of things can breed at that rate – but they don’t. There are always limits, things that hold them back.”

  “But these things… oh, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t really need to kill them all right away,” she said, “Just stop them from breeding.”

  “Yeah, we thought of that,” Smith agreed, “But how?”

  “Well, if they breed by kissing, and only at the full moon, just keep them from kissing anybody then.”

  “Fine, but how?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” Annie said, flustered. “How do they get near enough to kiss anybody in the first place?”

  “They just walk up, in disguise,” Smith said with disgust. “They’ll get all the friends and family of their original victims, I suppose – or maybe they’ll slip into bedrooms while people are asleep, the same as they did originally.”

  Annie sipped tea again. “What if they didn’t have disguises, then? Or if nobody was asleep?”

  “Sure, what if, but…” Smith’s voice trailed off, and his expression turned thoughtful.

  “You know,” he said a moment later, “You might have something there.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think so, yes.” Smith was smiling thoughtfully.

  “Would you care to explain that?” Annie asked sharply.

  “Actually, Annie, no, I’d rather not,” Smith replied. “I need to think about it some more.”

  She stared at him for a minute, then shrugged. “Have it your own way, Mr. Smith,” she said. She picked up the newspaper again.

  “It’ll be easier if there aren’t as many of them by then, of course,” he said.

  “Of course,” Annie said, without looking up. She drank down the rest of her tea.

  “I’m not about to walk back into the apartment, though, where I’d be outnumbered a hundred to one.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’ll need to get them alone, one by one.”

  Khalil, still looking sleepy, entered at that point. He exchanged greetings with them both.

  “Annie,” Smith asked, “May I use the phone?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Khalil, can you be ready to leave in ten minutes?” Smith asked. “I want to use what’s left of the daylight.”

  Khalil nodded.

  “Thanks,” Smith said. “Where’s the phone book?”

  6.

  “Hi, Walt? This is Jim. You remember, from work. Look, I’m having some trouble, and I need to talk to somebody. Could you meet me at that little bar on Townsend Road in about, oh, twenty minutes?”

  The voice on the phone was puzzled. “I don’t know, uh, Jim; what’s up?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, Walt. Could you please come? I’ll be at the bar.”

  “Oh, what the hell, sure, I guess. Twenty minutes? The bar on Townsend Road?”

  “Yeah, you know the one, Carlie’s Nightside I think it’s called.”

  “Okay. I’ll be there.”

  Smith hung up and smiled at Annie and Khalil.

  The thing pretending to be Walt Harris arrived right on time, but Smith and Khalil were not waiting at the bar. They were waiting in the parking lot behind the bar, which Smith had chosen because the lot backed up to a grove of trees and was not visible from the street or any neighboring buildings.

  The only problem was muffling the screams; they used Khalil’s shirt for that, and Smith got a finger jabbed by one of the needle-sharp teeth while stuffing it in.

  Khalil gagged repeatedly on the foul black lump, but gamely choked it all down. It didn’t stay down, of course, but once the thing had stopped moving and started to dissolve, they didn’t much care. Smith stood guard while Khalil heaved it all back up onto the grass beside the parking lot.

  When he was done he looked at Smith. “You ate two of those?” he said.

  Smith nodded. “And I’m going to eat another, just as soon as we can catch one. Then it’ll be your turn again.” He grimaced. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get used to it.”

  They both thought of retrieving the skin, but looking at the stinking mess that lay beneath the trees, neither one could bring himself to touch it. Nor could they afford to wait around for the remains to finish dissolving. Someone, either human or nightmare person, might happen along at any time.

  “We’ll get one another time,” Smith said, leading the way to his car.

  “Who is Jim, that he thought he was meeting?” Khalil asked, as they headed back toward Topaz Court.

  “Nobody,” Smith said, his eyes on the road. “I made him up.”

  Startled, Khalil asked, “But how…”

  “Their memories aren’t complete,” Smith explained. “It didn’t know whether the real Walt Harris knew someone named Jim who would want to meet him like that.”

  “Ah,” Khalil said, nodding.

  A moment later he added, “But that will not work with all of them, surely.”

  “Surely,” Smith agreed, “But it’s a start.”

  Khalil nodded again.

  7.

  The next ruse was a call from a veterinarian, to come and pick up a cat’s medicine. The false Attalla Sleiman knew that it had a cat in its care, and could not be sure that it was healthy; Smith’s mother had been through a bout of F.U.S. with her cat, years before, so Smith was able to fake the call quite convincingly, and to plead with the creature to come and get the diuretics and antibiotics quickly, because the cat would die without them. Wednesday, he said, was the only day they had evening hours at the clinic.

  Sleiman’s replacement believed it; he came to the animal hospital on Longdraft Road, over in Gaithersburg, and Smith and Khalil dragged him behind the unused shed out back.

  This time Smith had a Nerf ball for a gag, and used a stick to wedge it in.

  It was full dark by then, and the nightmare people were stronger in the dark, so the struggle lasted for some time, but in the end numbers and the initial surprise were enough.

  After that, the two of them were too battered and worn to tackle any more. They returned to Annie’s house, where they washed and rested.

  They stood guard that night, while Annie slept; they made plans over the kitchen table, listing every resident of the Bedford Mills Apartments that Smith knew by name, writing down every deception they could think of that might draw nightmare people out alone.

  “If they start travelling in pairs, we’re in trouble,” Smith remarked.

  Khalil just nodded.

  “Unless we recruit some more help, anyway,” Smith added a moment later.

  Khalil looked up.

  “When we started,” Khalil said, “There were four of us, even without Annie and Maggie. Now we are two.”

  Smith nodded. “I know,” he said, “And I feel guilty about Elias and Sandy, too. All the same, we can’t do it all ourselves, not when there are a hundred and forty of them left, and they probably all know who we are.”

  Reluctantly, Khalil nodded.

  8.

  Einar Lindqvist fired Smith on Thursday afternoon, but Smith didn’t worry about it. His job didn’t seem particularly important just n
ow.

  He had other concerns.

  “George,” Smith said into the receiver, “I can’t explain it on the phone, but it’s really important. You’ve got to come out here this afternoon, right after work. I’ll give you the address…”

  George came.

  The first odd thing George encountered was that the old lady who answered the door wouldn’t let him in until he’d pricked his finger with a needle she gave him, and let her see the drop of blood that oozed out.

  Then he was bundled into a car with Smith and another man, and driven over to the apartment house where Smith had lived, where they picked up a girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, saying they’d drive her to Patsy’s house. The girl seemed to know and trust Smith.

  Picking her up that way seemed strange, and made George nervous, but it was not particularly terrible.

  What came next was terrible. George watched in horror as his friend Ed Smith, who was now obviously insane, stuck a steak knife into the girl’s belly, while the stranger Ed called “Khalil” held her down.

  His horror grew when he saw that she didn’t bleed. She didn’t scream, either, but smiled, showing silvery teeth that George tried to convince himself were just peculiar braces.

  She started screaming a moment later, though, when Smith pulled a slimy black lump out of her chest and started to eat it, not merely raw but still living, still pulsing faintly and secreting something thin and clear and oily.

  George fainted.

  He came to in time to see the girl’s corpse dissolve slowly into putrid, oozing slime. The stench was unbelievable.

  “The real Jessie Goodwin’s been dead for a week,” Smith told him. “This thing ate her, and crawled inside her skin and wore it like a disguise.”

  The combination of the description and the smell was too much; George leaned out the car door and lost his lunch. As he wiped his mouth and looked at the ground he noticed that Smith hadn’t been able to keep the black thing down.