Tales from the Nightside

by Charles L. Grant

  The following week, however, I saw them sneaking over the fence by the slide’s comer. One had caught his jeans on a jagged shard of metal, and I ran over to grab his leg and yank him down. The others raced back into the woods, but this one I had and I wouldn’t let go.

  “All right, Davey,” I said, holding his aim and walking him back to my bench. “Let’s have a seat and a talk.”

  “Ain’t nothing to talk about.”

  “Davey,” I said, trying and failing to make his eyes meet mine, “when I was a cop and your house was along my patrol, you were a pretty good kid. You never gave anyone trouble, ever. So what in hell is going on around here? You know the rules. Why are you wasting your time hassling a bunch of kids just out of diapers?”

  Despite Marve’s description, Davey didn’t have long hair. It was tightly curled and nearly covered his ears, but it stayed clear of his shoulders and gleamed with constant washing. He was a slight boy, fighting to grow a mustache and losing, determined that the tighter his shirts the more attractive he would be to the opposite sex. He was proud, but I had never known him to be arrogant

  “You know about Gary, right?”

  Only it took him several minutes to speak to me. First he stared at the children gathered around the comer slide; then he worked at his hands for a while before brushing nervously at his hair. I knew it wasn’t me. Black going gray, pudgy after a summer’s good eating, dressed in comfortable old clothes that fit me loosely; imposing I wasn’t so I knew it wasn’t me.

  “You know about Gary, right?”

  I nodded.

  “You heard about El, too?”

  “Sure I did, but what do they—”

  He jerked his head toward the children. Playing jacks. Catch. On the swings. No one used that corner slide, but I had grown used to that. I think it was because of the mats— it took all the fun out of getting hurt “They did it”

  “Davey, dammit—”

  “Well, they did, Mr. Craig, honest! I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “Oh, sure they did.” Already he was beginning to annoy me. “And after they murdered poor Gary, they kidnapped El and took him to their hideout in the hills, right? Come off it, Davey!”

  He stood, his face lifted to catch the leaves fragmentary shadows. “They don’t like us, Mr. Craig, and—”

  “Well, I don’t blame them. After what you guys do to them, what do you want an invitation to a party?”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Oh, get the hell out of here,” I said, waving him away in disgust. “You’re as bad as they are. And stay away from here, you understand?” I called after him. “Stay where you belong and don’t bother us any more.”

  He ran, not looking back, and when I glanced over to the children they were laughing, and applauding. I grinned, rose in a half-bow and went back to my book I kept under the bench. But I wasn’t able to concentrate. Davey, no matter how he’d changed since I had last seen him, was not the kind of boy who delighted in tormenting children. I had no answer, but I didn’t like it

  The following morning, then, I was the first to arrive, and after unlocking the gates and propping them open, I toured the inside perimeter searching for lost shoes, socks, buttons, whatever the children and the mothers had left behind. When I reached the slide, however, I stopped and grabbed at the railing that bordered the rusted steps. At the foot of the curved metal slope was Eliot Daniels. His head was resting against the slide’s lip, and as I walked slowly around to kneel before him, I saw that his eyes were opened. And staring. And his mouth was agape in a silent, terrified scream. I was no medical expert, but I knew without checking that the young boy was dead; and I knew, just knew, that this was the way they had discovered Gary George.

  Footsteps snapped my head up.

  Darlene was approaching me timidly, a puzzled smile on her baby-fat face. I rose quickly, nearly ran to her side and turned her around with a hand at her waist “We’re going to open late today, dear,” I said. “Do me a favor and tell the others, will you? Tell them... well, just tell them we’ll be opening late.”

  I didn’t stay to watch where she ran after she left me; I hurried immediately to the nearest call box and phoned in the report. Mechanically. As if I’d never left the force and I was still wearing the blue. No one questioned me after I’d identified myself; it was enough for someone to recognize my voice. Five minutes later, a patrol car and ambulance had screeched through the gates and I told Dansworth all I knew with a minimum of conjecture. He smiled when I’d done, patted my arm and told me the playground would be closed for the rest of the day.

  He knew I would hover. He knew I would dance around the fringe of the investigators, making a nuisance of myself, pretending it was twenty years ago and nothing had changed.

  He knew it, and he didn’t tell me to get lost. Only that the playground would be closed for the rest of the day.

  For that I was grateful. More so when I stood on the sidewalk and my skin suddenly grew cold, my stomach lurched, perspiration soaked through my shirt I should have gone straight home to bed and a brandy, or straight to a bar and a beer, or straight to Marve’s office. Instead, I went hunting for Catherine and, finding her, dragged her from the office and into the Inn. I told her what had happened, and after she had gone through the motions of calming me, comforting my soul, she ordered us stiff drinks and a meal I knew I couldn’t eat

  But I drank, and I ate, and an hour or so later we were outside and walking.

  “Those poor kids,” I said for what must have been the fifth or sixth time. “Damn, this is going to tear them up.”

  “I know what you mean,” she said, her hand tucked around my elbow and squeezing when I couldn’t contain a shudder. “Once is bad enough, but twice... they’ll be having nightmares for a year. Especially that little one. What’s his name... Steve?”

  “No,” I said, “not them. I mean El’s friends, Davey and the others.” I told her about the talk with Davey the afternoon before. “They’re really scared, Cath, they really are. Now they’re going to think that place is jinxed or something, and they’re not going to be able to stand it you know. It’s a blow to their manhood, whatever they think that is. They’re going to get worse, I know it They’re going to bother those children until someone gets hurt, and then they’ll be in real trouble. Cop trouble.”

  “Kit, I think you’re exaggerating.”

  “Yeah, well, you should have seen Davey. He hates those little kids, Cath, he hates them so much... well, what can I say? Marve was right. I’m going to have to carry something around with me from now on.”

  She stopped and pulled me up short. “What do you mean? A gun?”

  “No,” I said, moving us on again, not liking her expression. “I still have my nightstick stowed away someplace.”

  “That’s barbaric, Kit! You can’t mean that.”

  “I don’t know if I do or not. Yes. Yes, I do. I don’t want any of them, big kids or little, getting hurt I don’t want another El Daniels in my playground.”

  She stopped again, this time letting go of my arm and standing back a pace. “Your playground? Kit, what’s the matter with you? It’s not your playground, and it’s not your beat. That’s over, Kit, over. You’re not a cop any more, and those kids... if you try something, they could hurt you badly.”

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Dammit, Kit, you’re stupidly stubborn. Stop playing the role, will you, please? Will you grow up? Now! Before it’s too late.”

  She left me then, standing in the middle of the block with my hands clenched in my pockets. I watched her go and I didn’t try to follow. I was trembling, not because of what I had seen, but because if my hands had been free I would have struck her.

  4

  I walked on aimlessly, staring at but not seeing the old and well-kept houses, the lawns still green, the trees only hinting at the colors to come. I stopped at a drug store and bought a pack of cigarettes. I sat for a while on a bus-stop bench and wat
ched the traffic waver in the dusk, then vanish behind headlights. I walked again, where the sidewalks were alternately black and gray, where the September warmth was lost in October’s chill.

  I considered going to Marve to drown my sorrows. But if Catherine hadn’t understood, he certainly wouldn’t. He was a grandfather and didn’t believe that people could be surrogates. Either you were or you weren’t was his belief; and if I was playing any kind of a role at all, it was being a cop.

  But I wasn’t.

  I’m not quite that stupid. Sentimental, perhaps, over the years I’d spent working my beat, but I hope I’m intelligent enough to realize when it’s all over and the door’s closed behind me.

  No. What I was trying to do, what I had done in my playground, was make myself available to the children for comfort. There were the mothers, of course, and the babysitters and the occasional father—but then there’s the old man not quite so old who always has a place on his knee, an ear cocked, a joke, a stick of gum, the small things forgotten and so delightfully needed.

  When I looked up to see where I was going, I found myself predictably at the playground gates. It was dark inside, and the nearest streetlight had been out for days. I reached out to brush at the cold damp fence, and heard voices. Distant. Almost like the afterthought of a wind.

  I squinted and tried to see through the dark to the other side. A muffled laugh, a stifled giggle, and I was into the woods and making away along the fence as quietly as I could. Twigs and thorns stabbed at my ankles, sliced my hands, but when I reached the mats I could make out a small group of children standing around the slide.

  I couldn’t believe it I would have sworn it was Davey and his friends preparing some kind of destructive revenge; but it was Darlene and Tim and a half-dozen others. They were staring up at Stevie, who sat on the slide’s platform, waved once and pushed himself down. I tensed, waiting for the thud of his body, and frowning when I heard and felt nothing. I peered closer, and Tim was readying himself for the earthward trip. Steve was gone. I decided then that the best thing I could do was sneak back through the woods and find a telephone to call their parents. I don’t know why I didn’t call out myself, why I didn’t scold them, scare them, send them running for whatever hidden exit they had. I don’t know why, but I didn’t.

  And Tim swooped down the slide, reached the end, slipped off... and vanished.

  Not into the shadows. Not into the darkness. He vanished. Into something not there.

  So did Darlene. And Miffy. And each of the others.

  Down the slide, off the slide, and... somewhere.

  I was alone. And it was silent. A breeze caught one of the canvas-seat swings and twisted it A ghost-thing that sent me careening out of the woods, down the street and into my home, where I stood in front of the living-room fireplace and stared at the flames. Of course, I thought I hadn’t seen what my eyes were looking at; and I began to wonder if playing the part of a playground father included playing the part of a senile old man.

  There was a table by the front window, and I turned around to reach for the decanter of brandy I kept in its center. As I did, I looked through the pane and out to the picket fence that bordered my lawn. Darlene was standing there, her hand on the gate latch. She was staring at the house. I ran quickly to the door, but by the time I had reached the lawn she was gone, her footsteps faint and fading under the nightblack trees.

  Now I’ve done it, I thought. Now I’ve unwittingly intruded, on one of their secret games. I’m done for. No more jokes, I no more comforts. They’d have nothing to do with me now, nothing more ever.

  I slept badly, then, and awoke only when Marve called me to tell me I was late and was I planning to quit. I grumbled an excuse—something to do with my drinking—and forced myself through a cloud of depression to the bench under the trees, where I took out my book, prepared for a day of loneliness.

  Five minutes later I looked up to see myself surrounded by a gaggle of children. Grinning. Miffy giggling.

  I opened my mouth to speak to them, to find some way to apologize and excuse my actions of the night before. I was ready, but suddenly they stiffened and backed away. A motion on my left, and I saw Davey walking toward me, two boys waiting by the gates and trying to look inconspicuous. I sighed loudly and leaned back to wait.

  “Afternoon, Davey,” I said coolly.

  “Mr. Craig,” he said, almost comic in his formality. Then, before I could stop him, his face reddened and he shouted something unintelligible at the children. They didn’t move. He snatched at Stevie’s arm, yanked him close and turned to me. “Ask them,” he demanded. “Ask them what they did with Chuck!”

  “Chuck? Davey, let that boy go immediately!” I rose and slapped his hand loose. Stevie didn’t run away; he only sauntered back to his friends and they moved in a pack toward the swings. “Now, what’s this all about, dammit?”

  Davey shoved his hands in his windbreaker pockets and wasted a few seconds scanning the overcast sky. I saw with a start, then, that anger and something else had combined to produce tears he didn’t want falling. He swallowed several times, then ducked his head to gaze at the ground. “Chuck,” he said. “He’s run away from home. Just like El.”

  “Davey—”

  “I was there!” he insisted. “I was sleeping over, right? I thought I heard this noise outside, so I got up and went to the window. That one,” and he pointed to Darlene, “was standing in the backyard. Chuck was there, too, talking to her. I ran downstairs, but they were gone before I got there. I must have ran around that block a hundred times, Mr. Craig, and I couldn’t find them. I woke his folks, but they only called the police. They didn’t believe nothing about the kid.

  They wouldn’t listen.” He looked up, and the tears fell. “They done something, Mr. Craig, and if somebody doesn’t help Chuck soon... there’s only three of us left, Mr. Craig. It don’t make no difference now what we do. God, you got to do something.”

  Before I could say anything, he raced to the gates and away, the other two following closer than shadows.

  I must be getting old, I thought; I don’t understand a damned thing that’s going on around here. But Davey, for all his fool faults, had frightened himself into something bordering on hysteria. He probably knew Chuck had been in some kind of trouble—a girl, drugs, something like that—and when he ran away, Davey used a dream as his excuse. But I couldn’t help thinking of my own dream that night; the kids and the slide and Darlene on the lawn. I knew it was weariness and a drink or two that made me see what I thought I saw, but it disturbed me nevertheless, made me walk slowly over to where the children were playing.

  “Darlene,” I said, “Davey tells me you were at his friend’s house last night.”

  She only smiled and pulled at her braids. “Not me, Mr. Craig,” she said when I repeated my not-quite-question. “I have to be in bed right after supper.”

  “Me, too,” Stevie said, clinging to my leg, then sliding down to sit on my foot. “Me sleep, too.”

  “Good for you, Stevie,” I said.

  “Mr. Craig?”

  “What is it, Darlene?”

  They were all around me now, and I couldn’t help a glance at the slide, the mats, the hole that wasn’t there.

  “We...” And she looked to the others, who were smiling broadly and trying not to laugh. I’ve seen that look before, when the children want to be solemn, want you to know that what they’re going to say is important and yet they’re embarrassed. Usually, they run away shrieking, immediately twisting the compliment into a game.

  “We like you, Mr. Craig.”

  I was startled. Though I didn’t know what to expect, that was definitely not it Miffy took my right hand and rested it briefly against her cheek. And so did the others, one by one until I found it hard to swallow and the light blurred at the edges of my vision.

  “We really like you, Mr. Craig.”

  The years I had weighted my shoulders. I knelt, then, and Stevie scrambled silently
onto my lap.

  “Would you please visit us sometime? Sometime soon?”

  I would have been pleased to see their homes, but I knew from what Marve had once told me that their parents were beginning to resent the influence I had over their offspring.

  “Will you let them get us?” Tim said, pointing vaguely toward the gates.

  “No,” I managed to say through Stevie’s insistent hugging. Don’t worry, kids. I won’t let them hurt you.”

  They broke, quietly, and after a moment I realized I had been dismissed. And glad I was, because one more word would have had me bawling like a baby. It was a good feeling, a needed feeling, and it should have had me cloud-walking for the rest of the day, but I couldn’t help thinking about Davey and his friends; they were so terrified now they’d be moved to do anything, and I was tempted to call their parents to warn them. Tempted, but I did nothing. It would only be meddling again, or so they would think. And if they complained loudly enough, Marve would be forced to take my playground from me.

  I didn’t want that.

  But the following morning, Chuck was at the foot of the slide. Staring.

  And people began to talk.

  5

  The disintegration was slow. A child here, a family there, but within a week or so after Chuck’s death the playground was practically deserted and even the comfort of my little friends couldn’t stop me from seeing that proverbial hand writing.

  Catherine told me, finally, while we were at dinner. Told me about the whispers, and the letters. “You should hear them, Kit, and read those things. It’s disgraceful the way they’re behaving.”

  “What can it hurt as long as they don’t come out to lynch me?”

  She puffed on her cigarette angrily, her face momentarily obscured by the smoke. When she waved it away impatiently, her bracelets jangled, the only harsh sound in the dim quiet of the Inn. Then she reached across the table and took both my hands in hers. “Kit, it’s getting dangerous for you. I hear things in the office, I really do, and there’s talk that you did it. All of it. Can you believe it?”