Tales from the Nightside

by Charles L. Grant

  "Bingo," he whispered to himself and pulled out the key, still cold, and heavier than he'd remembered. He snapped the lighter shut, and the renewed darkness immobilized him until his eyes adjusted to the more-than-faint glow that drifted from the front of the building. Using both hands, he felt for the lock and slid in the key, turning it as slowly as he could until it caught and the tumblers clattered over. He pushed with his shoulder and slipped in, shutting the door behind him. He leaned back against the wall and blew in relief when he felt the*light switch pressing against his coat. Without turning around, he fumbled until the lights came on, and, in spite of his suspicions, it was all he could do to keep from screaming.

  At Chandler, Murray, Simpson, Becketton, rigid and blankeyed, in a neat ordered row against the far wall. At clothing racks, shoe racks, tie racks filled.

  He knew that his mouth was open, and he felt silly. Then he shook off a billowing giddiness and inched forward to examine the androids more closely, unable to convince himself that they could not see him. He stumbled once and reached out a hand to steady himself. It came down in something soft, and when he looked down, it was a piece of cherry pie, quite fresh, Proctor Owens's favorite. As if it were blood, he wiped it hastily on his coat and extended a finger to trace Murray's stubbled chin, brush Chandler's gently molded cheek. On impulse, he tousled her hair, pinched her breasts and leered.

  He was about to tug at Becketton's beard when suddenly he felt drained, felt nothing. He stared a moment longer, then slumped, backing away until he was somehow in the hall, on the stairs, on the wet grass in the wind, walking until the sun rose and created more shadows. There was the sound of a car speeding noisily away. Still walking. And the harsh sound of a faraway siren as he crossed the still-empty parking lot.

  "Hey, Randy! Hey, Baptiste!" Kartre's voice did more than his words to convey his worry, but Randy continued to walk. "Hey, Randy!" and Kartre grabbed his arm and turned him around. "Damnit, man, where've you been? Didn't you hear that ambulance? Evan's mother came to pick him up, and when they hit the turn down by the bridge, they smacked into a tree and went into the river. Barb was out riding and said a cop told her they were both dead. Hey, Randy, can't you hear me or something?"

  The rush of words dammed for a moment, but Randy only nodded and said, "I have to see the old man."

  Kartre's eyes widened. "How'd you know that? I was just coming to get you. Old lady Tander just called the dorm. I covered for you like you said, but you'd better get over there. She sounds like she's ticked."

  "I'm going," Randy said.

  "Hey, wait a minute! Did you get into the room? What did you see? Was there anything there?"

  "Nothing," Randy said flatly, pulling away from Kartre's grasp. "Nothing at all."

  "Well, damnit, wait a minute, Randy. What kept you? Where were you all night?"

  Randy walked away, and a moment later Kartre stopped talking. Watching his roommate walk. Across the grass, through the glass door that marked the front office, ignoring the glare Miss Tander gave him, into Ainstrom's office without knocking.

  "You sent for me?" he said.

  Ainstrom looked up from a file folder he was holding and nodded. "Sit," he said.

  "You even sound like a robot. Does it take you all morning to warm up or something?"

  Ainstrom, unimpressively vested and grey-haired, smiled. "If it'll make you any happier, Randolph, I'm real."

  "Our proctor, Owens?"

  "Sharp lad, indeed. Yes, he's real. You sound a bit bitter, Randolph."

  "I thought I was getting an education, not getting experimented on."

  "Poor attitude, Randolph."

  "Randy."

  Ainstrom nodded at the correction and gestured for Randy to sit. "I'm sorry you had to be so curious, Randy," he said when Randy only stiffened.

  "So now what? Are you going to expel me like the others?"

  The headmaster finally replaced the folder on his empty desk and leaned back. "Expel, Mr. Baptiste? You underestimate me. Surely you can imagine the reaction of parents if they knew their darling children were being taught by androids. They, unenlightened, would react with... horror? Perhaps only disgust, like yourself. It sounds unfortunately melodramatic, but there would undoubtedly be something like a witch hunt, and I'm afraid my, uh, supervisors couldn't allow for that risk until the first class—your class, sir—has graduated and proven itself."

  Randy finally stopped screaming where nightmares are born and began to cast for a way out. But his options were narrow and thorned with fear. "You're going to kill me?" And he knew his voice was getting younger all the time.

  "No—not quite."

  The siren. He blinked. Kartre. "What about Evan? You probably rigged that one."

  Ainstrom began to frown. "He was too close to his family, and his family was too large. You, on the other hand, are very much different." Randy backed away as Ainstrom stood, as tall as the rumors had made him, "Remember what Miss Chandler has taught you, young man. Precision of language is the thing: the key to English is communication. Expel is the wrong word."

  Unbidden, Randy remembered his dream. "All right, then, what the hell is the right word?"

  "Replaced, Mr. Baptiste. Replaced."

  There was nothing Randy could say.

  A few minutes later, Ainstrom poked his head out of his office and beckoned to Miss Tander. "You'd better get that Baptiste guy on the next plane back. His son is being expelled."

  Miss Tander said nothing. There was, in fact, little she was programmed to do except glare and be threatening. And at that she was an expert.

  White Wolf Calling

  Snow: suspended white water humping over hidden rocks, slashed by a slick black road that edged around the stumped mountains and swept deserted between a pair of low, peaked houses that served as unassuming sentinels at the mouth of the valley; drifting, not diving to sheathe needled green arms that bent and held in multiples of thousands, spotting indifferently the tarmac walk that tongued from the half-moon porch of the house on the right. A snowman with stunted arms and holes for eyes squatted awkwardly beside a solitary spruce, watching nothing and making uneasy the brown-bundled man who stood by the mailbox. He leaned heavily against a broad-mouthed shovel, staring at the home opposite, turning his red-capped head to look beyond it to the forest that wavered through the sailing crystals up the slope to blend before the summit into the gray-white air.

  No wind. Breathing only as he listened to the sunset, strained to hear the summons of the wolf.

  "Mars?"

  The shovel skittered from his stiff hand, banged against the walk, and angered him with its rifle-volley clatter.

  "You think you have the power to move that house with just your eyes?"

  Turning, he bent to retrieve the shovel, waving his free hand to indicate he had heard and did not approve. Not so many decades before, he had begun calling his wife Venus because of her shortening of his own name to laughingly deify him; hers was Samantha, but his Venus she was. On the porch now, with crimson cheeks and her back reed-fragile, she folded her arms against the cold, waiting as he took a frustrated poke at the soiled snow the village plow had left to harass his cleaning. The mount was almost ice, and he glared at his gloves as if to blame them before hurrying to the house.

  "Get inside, you dope, before you catch your death."

  "I haven't seen the wolf, Venus. I'll probably live forever."

  "Quit your smiling, Mars. That isn't funny at all. Get inside."

  "You go on ahead. I'm almost done."

  "I'm stubborn, Mars Tanner. I like to watch you killing yourself while that shiny new snowblower I gave you for Christmas lies rotting in the garage."

  He pinched at her nose, tugged a lock of hair. "I may not be as young as I used to be, kid, but I can still handle anything that comes out of the sky."

  She made a face and thumped him on the back as he went through the door, then rushed down the darkened hallway into the sweet-smelling kitchen befor
e the warm stinging yanked at his parchment face and dried his lips.

  "Tea?"

  "No, thanks."

  "Coffee?"

  He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. "Every time you ask, and every time I have to tell you, dummy, that coffee gives me gas. When are the boys coming back?"

  "If they're sober, they'll be back in time for supper, as always," she said, taking his cap and stiffly new coat to hang by the wood-fed stove. "Some boys. They're almost forty, you know."

  "In age, maybe, but their heads are at least two dozen years behind."

  Venus tugged at the strings of her apron, letting the blue and yellow cloth tighten around her waist before she wriggled to settle it into place. Her hair was bunned gray, narrowing her face, sharpening her nose to a pale robin's beak. Only her chin remained youthfully rounded, even when she was mad.

  "I don't like the way you make fun of them, Mars. They've come to hard times, in case you've forgotten the accident. It wasn't easy for them, losing both their wives as suddenly as that." She stared at him standing by the refrigerator. "Two daughters-in-law, and no grandchildren. It hasn't been easy for me, either."

  "Those so-called women, and I'm sorry to say it, thought the boys had money, Venus. They took one look at our property here, didn't think anything at all about how land is cheap in this part of the state, and they talked themselves into believing we were rich. And neither Carter or Jonathan did anything to discourage them. Those women were too young and too damned impatient, and neither of my sons had brains enough to handle them."

  Suddenly annoyed with himself for speaking when he should have been thinking, Mars poked aside the curtains on the back door and glared at the first staggered row of pine at the end of the yard he had cleared himself during their first summer in the valley. Seeing nothing, more angry because he thought he might, he sat at the table and dry-washed his hands. Venus moved behind him, rested her cheek against his still-thick hair, and sighed just loud enough for him to hear. Knowing she would soon begin to caution him about little Tommy across the road, he shifted uneasily and cleared his throat.

  "Into town today, I heard Pierson talking at the barbershop."

  "It's about time you got a haircut," she said, sitting, one boned hand snaking unconsciously across her face in remembrance of a time when her hair was black and hung in gleaming ripples in front of one eye. "You're beginning to look like a sheep dog. Don't look like a very good one, though. Even without my glasses I can see it doesn't look like a very good one."

  "That's because I didn't get one. I was to the hardware store looking up a new hammer when Pierson called me in for a chat. He says, and you know how Pierson is when he says anything, he told me fat McKenzie saw the wolf last week, just before his car smacked into the telephone pole."

  "He was drinking. The newspaper said so. And that mechanic had done something to the steering. You think they had a trial for nothing?"

  "McKenzie was scared. He told me."

  "Of what, for heaven's sake? That mechanic? Mac owed that man a fortune for gambling, and practically everyone in town heard them fighting one time or another. My God, Mars, Mac outweighed him by a hundred pounds. If he was scared of anything, it was of having to pay the man and have nothing left for his wine. You know he always drank. I knew him for thirty-five years and can't remember the day he was last sober. Even on his wedding night when he married that Cranford woman."

  Mars grinned. "You were there, I suppose?"

  "Mars!"

  "I wouldn't be surprised. You do get around, you know."

  She feigned a roundhouse slap, he mimed a ducking wince, and they laughed, forgetting the moment what McKenzie had seen.

  "I'm going to take Tommy out to the cabin tomorrow to help me with the wood."

  Venus wiped at the smiling tears in her eyes and shook her head. "That boy's not good for you, Mars. He's not your son, you know, and I doubt that the Dovnys will approve of your trying to make him."

  "Oh, for pete's sake, Venus, his father's never home, and his mother's flat on her back because of that skiing accident that busted her back. He happens to like my company, and I happen to like his. And with no one else his age around close to play with, we get along just fine."

  "Well . . ."

  "We can take care of ourselves, dear, don't worry. If I see the wolf, I'll spit in its eye."

  Venus tried to smile, rose instead, and bustled meaninglessly at the stove where supper was already steaming in three huge black pots.

  Neither of them admitted believing there was a snow wolf in the mountains, had never even heard of such a green-eyed creature until the Dovny's purchase of the land opposite them where they had constructed the house Mars hated because it spoiled his rocking-chair view. He had met the Slavic father only once, at a Board of Education luncheon two years before at the village school. The man's English had been formal, as if memorized from a grammar book, but he charmed and was charming, and Mars had become friends with the blond-banged son when he had straightened a runner on the little boy's sled. The boy was the one who had told him and the village about the white wolf.

  "Oh, I get it," Mars had said as he pulled boy and sled up a slope behind the house. "You're talking about one of those werewolf things. I've seen them a lot on television, on those horror-show festivals."

  The boy frowned bewilderment until Mars had explained, then shook his head and squinted to think harder. "No, the wolf only comes when someone is to die. It's not a person."

  "Funny, but I never heard of that until you came around. How does it work? Is it kind of a family tradition? Maybe a Czech folk story, something like that?"

  The boy had shrugged.

  "Have a chocolate bar?"

  The boy nodded and stuck it in his pocket.

  Mars had completely forgotten that day until Samson O'Brien claimed he had shot at a wolf bigger than any he'd seen in his life. He was jeered when he failed to produce a pelt, or the tracks when he led a group of men to the site of the hunt. A week to the day later, his wife knifed him in the back when she learned he had been seeing the daughter of the mayor.

  "Mars, are you trying to hypnotize yourself, or has my company gone stale after all these years?"

  He blinked, tried a boyish grin before shaking his head. "Sorry," he said, leaning back in his chair. "I was thinking."

  "Well, stop it. The boys are home. I heard them on the stairs."

  "You want me to go up?"

  "What for?"

  He shrugged. "Talk to them. See what their plans are. God knows there isn't any paying work around here."

  "We won't be around that long, Pop," and Mars grimaced when he turned so abruptly he twisted his side.

  The sons were twins, dark-haired, taller than their parents and heavier about the chest and waist. Carter was the younger by three minutes, but his face was shadowed with lines and puffs; Jonathan was the same as he had been at thirty, except for the eyes that seemed perpetually half closed.

  "I wasn't trying to ease you out," Mars said, almost pouting, while they noisily took their places at the table.

  "I know, Pop," Carter said.

  "Of course he knows," Jonathan said, not bothering to disguise a slighting sneer. "He knows everything, don't you, Carter boy? Even took Pop's advice and knew enough to put the girls on that goddamned, beat-up excuse for a train."

  "That's enough!" Venus said, slapping plates down in front of them. "The past is past, and I won't have that kind of talk in my house. You two have got to get back on your feet again, and soon. Your father's too proud to admit it, and too good to say it, but we can't have you around here indefinitely. It's too much of a strain."

  "I know," Carter said, rising to help ladle the soup. "Just need a little readjusting, that's all. Besides, my leave's up in a week and I'll have to be getting back to camp."

  "My goodness," Jonathan said, "does even a captain have to run like a buck private? Something else I didn't know. When are you going to make major, by th
e way? Ever?"

  "Go to hell," Carter said.

  "Language, brother," Jonathan said, scooping chunks of butter onto steaming slices of homemade bread.

  "That's enough from the both of you," Mars said. "Your mother's right, as always. My pension can't handle everything. We love you both, but soon you've got to make a move. I'm talking especially to you, Jon. Your brother at least has a check coming in."

  "Pop," Carter said before his twin could snap again, "why don't you sell the house? Maybe move to one of those retirement places. I know you love it here and all, but for crying out loud, the physical upkeep alone is going to do you in one of these days."

  "I'll buy the place," Jonathan said, suddenly solicitous.

  "Neither of you will," Venus said, taking her seat. "We've been here since you were born, and I'm not about to leave it now. Say grace, Mars, before I lose my appetite."

  And dinner passed into evening as the snow grayed, crusted, and was littered with snapping fallen branches weakened by ice. Fireplace flames shadowed the living room in spite of the lamps, and Mars stood at a window, listening to his shattered family playing cards, listening later, as he wandered the house looking for sleep, to whispers: the house itself, talking down to dawn through the mouth of the furnace, the pops of cooling wood in the fireplace, the creaks of boards searching for a comfortable place to shy away from the rising wind; the wind, riding the back of the snow, drifting powder over the road, pushing against thin glass, humming to itself in wires strung through the air, once to a crescendo covering hushed words; the words, snapping, biting, accusing, and prodding the weaknesses of the old man in vain attempts at deadly prophecy, husking laughter when one suggested the other do Mars the fatal blow.

  Standing in the hallway, Mars shivered at the door of his sons' room, pleading for a prayer, sucking back the trembling that directed him to break down the barrier and cast them out.