Dr. Frauenthal left it at that. He checked over the bandages he had just finished applying, then nodded approval.
“That should do it,” he said. “Now, you just lie here and rest.”
He turned to the others, who stood watching. Khalil had insisted that they be admitted, rather than waiting outside, and Frauenthal hadn’t wanted to waste time arguing when his patient was losing so much blood.
“I think he’ll be fine,” he said.
The girls smiled, but Khalil did not. “Doctor,” he said, “Please, you must look at these girls, too, and I think pump out their stomachs – one of them, anyway.”
The two girls both turned to stare at Khalil.
“What are you talking about?” the older one demanded.
“I am talking,” Khalil said, “about that thing that is not your father. It kissed one of you, there at the fire, and I think it did more than kiss.”
The older girl simply looked more confused, while the younger one’s mouth dropped open in astonishment.
“How did you… I mean, what are you talking about?” she demanded.
“Miss Newell,” Khalil said, “I saw you at the meeting at Mrs. McGowan’s house, so I know you have heard this and not believed it, but it is the truth. That thing is not your father. It has killed him and taken his place. And now, it has begun to do the same to you, I think. When it kissed you, did it not feel peculiar?”
“Well, yeah,” the younger one admitted, looking uneasily at her sister.
“Maddie,” the elder said, “What are you talking about?”
“Well, it did, Alice,” Maddie said, “It felt really weird. Daddy never kissed me like that before. I mean, on the mouth, and then he opened his mouth, and at first I thought, you know, he was giving me the tongue, and that was pretty weird, I mean Daddy, doing that? But then it wasn’t his tongue at all, it felt like something else, and it sort of crawled into my mouth and I could tell it wasn’t Daddy at all, it was something he’d had in his mouth, and it tried to slide down my throat and I almost choked on it, and swallowed it without meaning to.”
Alice was staring at her.
“Really?” she asked.
Maddie nodded.
“Why didn’t you say something?” Alice demanded.
“Well, I thought maybe I’d just imagined it all, and besides, we were so busy, helping Mr. Smith and everything, I hadn’t had a chance.” She looked as if she might cry. “And besides, it was Daddy who did it.”
The doctor had listened to all this, and looked utterly baffled. Smith was too weak to argue; he just lay back and watched. It was Khalil who said, “We should pump her stomach, yes?”
Alice started to protest, but stopped when she saw Maddie nodding.
Dr. Frauenthal agreed.
6.
There were two things in Maddie Newell’s digestive tract that had no business there.
One was a significant quantity of blood, apparently her own, and all still fresh. It was as if she had suddenly acquired a severe bleeding ulcer, sometime in the past hour or two.
The other was a black thing about five inches long and an inch or so in diameter, slick and moist, with four tiny sets of razor-sharp, hook-shaped claws, two at the narrower end – what Khalil thought of as the tail – and two about two inches back from the “head.”
It also had a mouth in the head end, a narrow opening perhaps an inch long and lined with tiny needle teeth.
It was quite obvious what was responsible for the blood; the thing’s claws and teeth were smeared with bright red.
It was also obvious that the thing was still alive.
The little group in the examining room stared at it in horror as it squirmed vigorously in the plastic bottle that Dr. Frauenthal had sealed it in.
“That was inside me?” Maddie asked.
Dr. Frauenthal nodded.
“It’s out now,” he said, in a vain attempt to sound comforting.
Maddie sat down, feeling faint.
“Kill it,” Alice said through clenched teeth.
Dr. Frauenthal shook his head. “It should already be dead,” he said. “I don’t know how to kill it.”
“Cut it up!” Alice said.
Frauenthal grimaced. “Ever see a flatworm cut in half?” he asked.
“Well, do something,” Alice insisted.
“What I’m going to do,” Frauenthal said, “is try and find out what it is.”
Alice and Maddie both turned to look at Khalil; Dr. Frauenthal followed their gaze.
“Sir,” he said, “I take it these two think you know something about that thing in the bottle. And as it was your suggestion that it was in there, in her stomach, I assume they’re right.”
Reluctantly, Khalil nodded. He looked at Smith, but Smith was obviously in no shape to comment.
He sighed, and started explaining.
The thing in the bottle squirmed helplessly as Khalil talked.
7.
Annie McGowan sat in front of the TV, her feet tucked up on the couch beside her, knitting nervously and paying no attention to NBC’s special on gangs, cops, and drugs.
Somehow, awful as gangs and drugs were, they didn’t have the same immediacy they had had two weeks before.
She had been alone in the house for hours, ever since Smith and Khalil had left to observe the results of their handiwork, and she had been getting more and more nervous.
For over a week, she had been expecting her phony sister-in-law to drop by, and it hadn’t. She had been ready for it, and it hadn’t come. She had lived with that. Somehow, though, the full moon, and her incomplete knowledge of what was happening seven blocks away, seemed to make it worse. She almost expected to see faces at the windows, or hear strange howling outside, like a scene from one of those awful late-night horror movies on TV that she never meant to watch but sometimes did anyway.
The sirens that had sounded for so long, over on Barrett Road, had all died away now; she wasn’t sure what that meant. Was it just that all the emergency vehicles had reached the apartment complex, or had something gone wrong and kept more from coming?
She pulled too hard at the yarn, trying to loosen a tangle, and instead it knotted hard. She hissed in annoyance.
She was trying to pick the knot apart when the doorbell rang.
She looked up, startled.
Someone knocked, hard.
She dropped the knitting on the endtable, got slowly to her feet, and turned off the TV. Neither Smith nor Khalil would knock like that; Maggie wouldn’t knock at all. That dreadful imitation Kate ought to know better than to knock that way.
Lieutenant Buckley, perhaps?
Or someone else?
Or something else? “Who is it?” she called, as she made her way slowly toward the front door.
No one answered.
She hesitated at the door and called again, “Who is it?”
“It’s me,” someone said, in a familiar voice.
Ed Smith’s voice.
But he wouldn’t have knocked and rung like that. He had a key now, after all.
She threw a glance up the stairs at the bathroom door. It stood open a crack, the room beyond dark.
“Just a minute,” she called.
She hurried up the steps, almost running, pushed the door open and turned on the light, to have it ready. She didn’t want to fumble in the dark.
She didn’t have time to check everything, not without arousing suspicion, but a quick glance around spotted nothing wrong. She turned and headed back down.
“Come on, Annie, open the door,” Smith’s voice was calling.
She paused to catch her breath, then reached out and turned the knob.
Immediately, the door was pushed open, and she found herself facing not Ed Smith, but a big, fat man in a greasy T-shirt and old Levis.
He grinned at her.
She stepped back, startled.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Joe Samaan, at the moment,” he s
aid, still in Ed Smith’s voice. “May I come in?”
She backed up onto the bottom step of the staircase. “Well, I…” she began.
“You don’t really have a choice,” the thing said, still grinning.
She stepped back, up another step.
The creature stepped in in a rush of warm, fetid air, and behind it came another man, another stranger, also grinning. She could see a third, a woman, out on the porch.
Simple nervousness turned to real fright. She hadn’t expected a whole group of them.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
The thing that called itself Joe Samaan wiggled a finger at her. “Can’t you guess, Annie?” it asked. “Tsk, tsk, I thought you’d figure it out right away.”
“Well, I didn’t, mister,” Annie snapped defiantly. “What do you and your friends think you’re doing?”
“What are we doing?” It grinned, and silvery teeth glittered. “Well, we’re planning a little welcome home party for your friends, Ed Smith and Khalil Saad, when they get here.” It stepped closer, and she backed farther up the stairs; she was halfway up and it was at the foot, now, and the other two had crowded into the foyer behind it.
The one pretending to be female closed the door, pushing gently until the latch clicked into place.
“I don’t think you should do that,” Annie said, trying desperately to figure out what to do about there being three of them, when she had only expected one. Being scared wasn’t going to do any good. The things were horrible, but they weren’t omnipotent; Smith and Khalil and that Lieutenant Buckley had been killing them easily enough once they knew how. The main advantages the creatures had lay in their unfamiliarity and their viciousness, and she knew enough of them to cut into that unfamiliarity.
Smith and the others could work up to a pretty good level of viciousness, too, and she thought she could manage that herself – but how could she counter being outnumbered three to one?
The thing gave her no clue. It just grinned.
She couldn’t think of anything.
All she could do was go through the motions, do what she could, and hope that Smith and Khalil got back in time to save her, and that they weren’t caught off-guard.
She wished she’d thought to fetch a knife from the kitchen before she opened the door, so at least she could go down fighting.
“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.
She knew perfectly well they were going to kill her, if they could – not necessarily here and now, but sooner or later. They were evil; killing was what they did, their very essence. She was just stalling.
“Why, no, Annie,” it said, advancing. “Why would I want to kill you? I’m not going to hurt you at all.” She was retreating, and almost at the top. “In fact,” it said, “I’d like to give you a kiss.”
She was at the top; the leader was halfway up the stairs, the others waiting in the hall below, certain that they wouldn’t be needed to deal with one frightened old woman.
She turned and ran for the bathroom.
The thing bounded up the remaining steps and ran after her.
She made it through the door, but before she could turn and slam it, the thing was right there, forcing its way into the tiny room. Annie didn’t try to fight it; she just backed away again, pushing aside the shower curtain and stepping into the bathtub.
The thing pursued her, right up to the shower curtain, just as she expected.
She reached up, took the wires from the showerhead, and pulled hard.
The bottom of the shower curtain snapped out and slapped against the thing’s ankles, wrapping itself around its legs, as the loop of wire she had painstakingly sewn into the heavy plastic curtain and then threaded through a dozen pulleys and guides was yanked tight.
The nightmare person, caught completely unprepared, lost its balance and fell heavily forward; she scrambled out of its way as it tore the curtain down from the rings.
It roared incoherently as it sprawled in the tub.
Before it could recover she wound the wires around its neck and ankles, binding the curtain in place at both ends.
Here she paused, diverging slightly from her plan, to slam shut the bathroom door and bolt it from the inside.
Then she went back to her captive, and with the rest of the wire and rolls of adhesive tape and reinforced package tape she finished the job of securely binding it up in the plastic curtain.
Unfortunately, that was as far as her original scheme could take her; she hadn’t expected to be trapped in the bathroom with two more of the nightmare people waiting outside.
The thing had overcome its initial surprise and was beginning to struggle vigorously. She hoped her wrappings would hold.
She heaved the thing’s legs up and over the side, and left it lying in the tub, while she sat down on the toilet to decide what to do next.
The thing shouted, “Let me up! Get this thing off me!” The shower curtain did surprisingly little to muffle it.
Someone knocked on the bathroom door.
“Hey, what’s going on in there?” an unfamiliar voice called.
Annie looked up. “I’ve got your friend,” she said. “He’s my prisoner.”
The one in the tub bellowed so loudly she was sure the others couldn’t hear her over that racket. The noise it made echoed off the tile and hurt her ears.
“Oh, shut up, you!” she shouted back at it. “Don’t you want to know what’s happening?”
It shut up, reluctantly.
“Now,” she said loudly, directing her comments at the closed door, “As I was saying, I’ve got your friend tied up, and I’ve got my husband’s old straight razor. You two both get the heck out of my house, right now, or I’ll… I’ll cut out this thing’s heart and eat it!”
She wished she actually did have that old razor, but it was long gone. She hadn’t seen it in thirty years or more. She wondered, even as she spoke, whether there was anything sharp in the bathroom, in case she had to carry out her threat.
She knew that Smith had killed at least one nightmare person with just his teeth and nails, but she didn’t think she had the strength or the stomach for that.
The two outside the bathroom were conferring quietly; she could hear their voices, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“If you’re thinking you can just break that door down and get me,” Annie called, “Remember, I already fooled this one. We were expecting you to try something like this; the whole house is booby-trapped. You can go now, or you can stumble around into one of the other traps, or you can wait until the others get here.”
She was sweating, she realized, sweating hard for the first time in years. It wasn’t from exertion; she hadn’t done anything all that frightful, just run up the stairs and tied up her captive – not that that was easy at her age!
It was fear, that was why she was sweating. She hoped that her terror wasn’t obvious in her voice when she told all these outrageous lies.
“She’s bluffing!” the one in the tub called. It started struggling harder, and one piece of tape came loose.
She kicked at the side of the tub. “Hush up, you!” she snapped.
The knob rattled, and then someone outside was leaning on the door; she could see it bending, giving slightly.
The bolt held. She bit her lower lip and looked around.
The only sharp object in the medicine cabinet was her little disposable plastic safety razor; that wouldn’t be any use. And there wasn’t anything sharp at all in the cabinet under the sink.
That left the vanity drawer, and that was where the old manicure set was.
The scissors and clippers weren’t any use, but the nail file might do. She pulled it out and looked at it.
Using a four-inch nail file to cut the heart out of a live, struggling monster didn’t seem possible. She put the file down on the edge of the sink.
Something thumped heavily against the door.
“Go away!” she said, panicky, “Or you’r
e next!”
“Joe,” something called, “What’s happening in there?”
“She tripped me up and tied me up in something!” the one in the tub bellowed.
“Shut up!” Annie shouted. She picked up the nail file, then put it down again. She crossed to the tub.
The thing was flopping like a fish, banging its feet against the bottom of the tub; on an upswing she caught hold of one.
Since the feet were bound tightly together at the ankles, wired together, catching one foot meant catching both.
The thing didn’t want its feet caught, and it took all her strength to hold them with one hand while she used the other to pry off its shoes – badly-worn tennis shoes.
“No reason I have to let you bang up my bathtub,” she muttered, more to herself than to her captive.
Another thump sounded as something rammed up against the bathroom door. Annie heard the bolt scraping against its collar, but it still held.
When she had one shoe off and the other loose, the thing thrashed about, and she lost her hold; the feet slammed into one side of the tub, and the other shoe fell free.
The creature wore white sweatsocks – but they weren’t sweaty at all, despite the heat outside.
Something rammed into the door again as she tried to recapture the swinging feet, and she heard wood crack.
“Darn it!” she said.
Then she had them, had both feet, and in a moment of bravery, or maybe just insanity, she yanked down one sock, bent over, and bit down hard on the creature’s right achilles tendon.
It screamed, an ear-splitting squeal that echoed from the tiled walls. Annie was almost glad that her hearing wasn’t as acute as it once had been.
The pair outside the door fell silent. The banging against the door stopped.
Annie looked at the bite, and saw that she had poked a small hole in the thing’s stolen skin. She bent over and bit again, worrying at the skin like a dog at a bone.
Her captive shrieked in agony.
She kept biting, and chewing, until she had removed most of the skin from one ankle – she spat the bits down the drain as she went, and ignored the thing’s wails.
Then she peeled off the sock and the skin from its right foot, peeled the skin away as if she were peeling an orange, and looked at the stringy grey flesh beneath.
The Nightmare People Page 24
