Things Beyond Midnight

by William F. Nolan

  He looked confused. “I thought you’d love it!” His tone held irritation. “Didn’t you just tell me you always wanted...”

  “Not one like this,” she interrupted, overriding his words. “Not this one.” She touched his shoulder. “Can we go back to the house now? Its cold here. I’m freezing.”

  He frowned. “But it’s warm, Liz! Must he eighty at least. How can you be cold?”

  She was shivering and hugging herself for warmth. “But I am! Can’t you feel the chill?”

  “All right,” he sighed. “Let’s go back.”

  She didn’t speak during the climb up to the house.

  Below them, wide and black and deep, the pool rippled its dark skin, a stirring, sluggish, patient movement in the windless afternoon.

  Upstairs, naked in the Spanish four-poster bed, Lizbeth could not imagine what had come over her at the pool. Perhaps the trip up to the house along the sharply winding road had made her carsick. Whatever the reason, by the time they were back in the house, the dizziness had vanished, and she’d enjoyed the curried chicken dinner Jaimie had cooked for them. They’d sipped white wine by a comforting hearth fire and then made love there tenderly late into the night, with the pulsing flame tinting their bodies in shades of pale gold.

  “Jan and David are coming by in the morning,” he had told her. “Hope you don’t mind.”

  “Why should I? I think your kids are great.”

  “I thought we’d have this first Sunday together, just the two of us; but school starts for them next week, and I promised they could spend the day here.”

  “I don’t mind. Really I don’t.”

  He kissed the tip of her nose. “That’s my girl.”

  “The skinny man...”

  “What about him?”

  “I don’t understand why he didn’t try to sell this house in the ten years when he wasn’t living here.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t need the money.”

  “Then why bet it on a poker game? Surely the pot wasn’t anywhere near equal to the worth of this place.”

  “It was just a way for him to stay in the game. He had a straight flush and thought he’d win.”

  “Was he upset at losing the place?”

  Jaimie frowned at that question. “Now that you mention it, he didn’t seem to be. He took it very calmly.”

  “You said that he left after his wife split. Did he talk about her at all?”

  “He told me her name.”

  “Which was?”

  “Gail. Her name was Gail.”

  Now, lying in the upstairs bed, Lizbeth wondered what had happened to Gail. It was odd somehow to think that Gail and the skinny man had made love in this same bed. In a way, shed taken Gail’s place.

  Lizbeth still felt guilty about saying no to Jaimie when he’d suggested a post midnight swim. “Not tonight, darling. I’ve a slight headache. Too much wine, maybe. You go on without me.”

  And so he’d gone on down to the pool alone, telling her that such a mild, late-summer night was just too good to waste, that he’d take a few laps around the pool and be back before she finished her cigarette.

  Irritated with herself, Lizbeth stubbed out the glowing Pall Mall in the bedside ashtray. Smoking was a filthy habit—ruins your lungs, stains your teeth. And smoking in bed was doubly stupid. You fall asleep... the cigarette catches the bed on fire. She must stop smoking. All it took was some real will power, and if...

  Lizbeth sat up abruptly, easing her breath to listen. Nothing. No sound.

  That was wrong. The open bedroom window overlooked the pool, and she’d been listening, behind her thoughts, to Jaimie splashing about below in the water.

  Now she suddenly realized that the pool sounds had ceased, totally. She smiled at her own nervous reaction. The silence simply meant that Jaimie had finished his swim and was out of the pool and headed back to the house. He’d be here any second.

  But he didn’t arrive.

  Lizbeth moved to the window. Moonlight spilled across her breasts as she leaned forward to peer out into the night. The pale mirror glimmer of the pool flickered in the darkness below, but the bulk of trees screened it from her vision.

  “Jaimie!” Her voice pierced the silence. “Jaimie, are you still down there?”

  No reply. Nothing from the pool. She called his name again, without response.

  Had something happened while he was swimming? Maybe a sudden stomach cramp or a muscle spasm from the cold water? No, he would have called out for help. She would have heard him.

  Then... what? Surely this was no practical joke, an attempt to scare her? No, impossible. That would be cruel, and Jaimie’s humor was never cruel. But he might think of it as fun, a kind of hide and seek in a new house. Damn him!

  Angry now, she put on a nightrobe and stepped into her slippers. She hurried downstairs, out the back door, across the damp lawn, to the pool steps.

  “Jaimie! If this is a game, I don’t like it! Damn it, I mean that!” She peered downward; the moonlit steps were empty. “Answer me!”

  Then, muttering “Crap!” under her breath, she started down the clammy wooden steps, holding to the cold iron pipe rail. The descent seemed even more precipitous in the dark, and she forced herself to move slowly.

  Reaching level ground, Lizbeth could see the pool. She moved closer for a full view. It was silent and deserted. Where was Jaimie? She suddenly was gripped by the familiar sense of dizzy nausea as she stared at the odd, weirdly angled rock shapes forming the pool’s perimeter. She tried to look away. And couldn’t.

  It wants me!

  That terrible thought seized her mind. But what wanted her? The pool? No... something in the pool.

  She kicked off the bedroom slippers and found herself walking toward the pool across the moon-sparkled grass, spiky and cold against the soles of her bare feet.

  Stay back! Stay away from it!

  But she couldn’t. Something was drawing her toward the black pool, something she could not resist.

  At the rocks, facing the water, she unfastened her nightrobe, allowing it to slip free of her body.

  She was alabaster under the moon, a subtle curving of leg, of thigh, of neck and breast. Despite the jarring hammer of her heart, Lizbeth knew that she had to step forward into the water.

  It wants me!

  The pool was black glass, and she looked down into it, at the reflection of her body, like white fire on the still surface.

  Now... a ripple, a stirring, a deep-night movement from below.

  Something was coming—a shape, a dark mass, gliding upward toward the surface.

  Lizbeth watched, hypnotized, unable to look away, unable to obey the screaming, pleading voice inside her: Run! Run!

  And then she saw Jaimie’s hand. It broke the surface of the pool, reaching out to her.

  His face bubbled free of the clinging black water, and acid bile leaped into her throat. She gagged, gasped for air, her eyes wide in sick shock.

  It was part Jaimie, part something else!

  It smiled at her with Jaimie’s wide, white-toothed open mouth, but, oh God! only one of its eyes belonged to Jaimie. It had three others, all horribly different. It had part of Jaimie’s face, part of his body.

  Run! Don’t go to it! Get away!

  But Lizbeth did not run. Gently, she folded her warm, pink-fleshed hand into the icy wet horror of that hand in the pool and allowed herself to be drawn slowly forward. Downward. As the cold, receiving waters shocked her skin, numbing her, as the black liquid rushed into her open mouth, into her lungs and stomach and body, filling her as a cup is filled, her final image, the last thing she saw before closing her eyes, was Jaimies wide-lipped, shining smile—an expanding patch of brightness fading down... deep... very deep... into the pool’s black depths.

  Jan and David arrived early that Sunday morning, all giggles and shouts, breathing hard from the ride on their bikes.

  A whole Sunday with Dad. A fine, warm-sky summer day
with school safely off somewhere ahead and not bothering them. A big house to roam in, and yards to run in, and caramel-ripple ice cream waiting (Dad had promised to buy some!), and games to play, and...

  “Hey! Look what I found!”

  Jan was yelling at David. They had gone around to the back of the house when no one answered the bell, looking for their father. Now eight-year-old Jan was at the bottom of a flight of high wooden steps, yelling up at her brother. David was almost ten and tall for his age.

  “What is it?”

  “Come and see!”

  He scrambled down the steps to join her.

  “Jeez!” he said. “A pool! I never saw one this big before!”

  “Me neither.”

  David looked over his shoulder, up at the silent house.

  “Dad’s probably out somewhere with his new girlfriend.”

  “Probably,” Jan agreed.

  “Let’s try the pool while we’re waiting. What do you say?”

  “Yeah, let’s!”

  They began pulling off their shirts.

  Motionless in the depths of the pool, at the far end, where rock and tree shadows darkened the surface, it waited, hearing the tinkling, high child voices filtering down to it in the sound-muted waters. It was excited because it had never absorbed a child; a child was new and fresh—new pleasures, new strengths.

  It had formed itself within the moist deep soil of the hill, and the pool had nurtured and fed it, helping it grow, first with small, squirming water bugs and other yard insects. It had absorbed them, using their eyes and their hard, metallic bodies to shape itself. Then the pool had provided a dead bird, and now it had feathers along part of its back, and the bird’s sharp beak formed part of its face. Then a plump gray rat had been drawn into the water, and the rat’s glassy eye became part of the thing’s body. A cat had drowned here, and its claws and matted fur added new elements to the thing’s expanding mass.

  Finally, when it was still young, a golden-haired woman, Gail, had come here alone to swim that long-ago night, and the pool had taken her, given her as a fine new gift to the thing in its depths. And Gail’s long silk-gold hair streamed out of the thing’s mouth (one of its mouths, for it had several), and it had continued to grow, to shape itself.

  Then, last night, this man, Jaimie had come to it. And his right eye now burned like blue phosphor from the thing’s face. Lizbeth had followed, and her slim-fingered hands, with their long, lacquered nails, now pulsed in wormlike convulsive motion along the lower body of the pool-thing.

  Now it was excited again, trembling, ready for new bulk, new lifestuffs to shape and use. It rippled in dark anticipation, gathering itself, feeling the pleasure and the hunger.

  Faintly, above it, the boy’s cry: “Last one in’s a fuzzy green monkey!” It rippled to the vibrational splash of two young bodies striking the water.

  It glided swiftly toward the children.

  00:03

  STARBLOOD

  This one has a complex root system. It began not as a short story but as several novels. Three of the sections forming the narrative (those titled “Tris,” “Morgan,” and “Bax”) were originally the first chapters of three science fiction novels that died aborning.

  I had not been able (or willing) to pursue the plots further. Yet I liked these three openings and refused to abandon them. Finally, I placed a frame around them, involving a fresh twist on the aliens-invading-Earth concept, revised them in this context, and added three new sections. Result: “Starblood.”

  This story was selected for the annual Year’s Best Science Fiction back in 1973. I was paid for it and the editor sent “Starblood” to the publisher (Ace Books), but someone fumbled the ball and my story was left out of the printed contents. Too bad, because it’s one of my favorites, and I happen to believe that the honor was deserved.

  STARBLOOD

  Is the orbit stabilized ||

  Yes...

  How much longer to penetration ||

  Soon now.

  You first. Then I’ll follow.

  Do you think... I mean, is it possible, with this planet, that we’ll be able to succeed ||

  Well try. That’s all we can do. I have no answers.

  -1-

  BOBBY

  Bobby was still crying, his tiny face red, fists clenched, ignoring the roboMother who rocked and crooned to him.

  Dennison walked over, switched off the machine, and picked up his son. He carried the squalling infant to the patio where his wife was playing Magneball with an android instructor.

  “Bobby’s been crying all afternoon,” Dennison said. “Do something with him. See if you can’t shut him up.”

  Mrs. Dennison glared at her husband. “Let Mother handle him.”

  “I switched her off,” said Dennison. “She wasn’t doing any good. Take him fora ride in the copter. He likes that. It’ll shut him up.”

  “You do it,” said Alice Dennison. “I’m perfecting my back thrust. I play tournament next week, you know.”

  “You don’t give a damn about your son, do you?”

  She nodded to the android, ignoring the question. “Ready,” she said. A magnetic disc leaped from the instructor’s hand and the woman expertly repelled it with a thrusting left glove.

  “Well done, Mrs. Dennison,” said the android.

  In a silent rage, Dennison advanced on the android and beheaded the machine with a chair leg.

  “I hope you’re satisfied,” said the wife. “They cost fifteen thousand dollars. I’ll just have to buy another.”

  “You do that,” said Dennison. “But first you take Bobby up in the copter. I can’t stand any more of his squalling.”

  She scooped up the baby, who continued to howl, and took a riser to the roofpad. Activating the family flier, she placed Bobby inside and lifted off in a whir of gleaming blades.

  Five miles above New Chicago, Mrs. Dennison switched the copter to autoflight, unlatched the main exit panel and held her baby son straight out into the blast of air.

  She smiled at him—and released her grip.

  Still crying, Bobby Dennison fell twisting and tumbling toward the cold earth below.

  -2-

  TRIS

  In Greater New York, under warm summer sun, the walkways sang. Heat from the sky stirred delicate filaments within the moving bands and a thin silver rain of music drifted up to the walkriders, soothing them, easing away some small bit of city hive pressure.

  For Tris, an ex-Saint at sixteen, the pressures were mounting and the song of the walkways did not ease her; she was close to an emotional breakpoint. When a Saint is cast out by the Gods she has nowhere to go. Society shuns the outcast. Her only chance lies in reinstating herself. If she cannot achieve this, she ceases to function as a viable entity and self-extinction is her only recourse.

  Tris was beautiful and free-spirited, with a body built for Sainthood. Surely, she told herself, she would find her way back into Divine Favor.

  “The Reader will see you now,” said the wallspeak. “Inside and just to the left.”

  Tris moved ahead past the sliding wall and turned left.

  Reader Sterning was ready for her, a tall man in flowsilks. His smile was warmly professional. They touched palms and Tris sat down.

  “Well, well,” said Sterning. “I can surface why you’re here, and believe me when I tell you that I sympathize.”

  “Thank you, Reader,” said the girl softly.

  “How long were you a Saint?”

  Tris knitted her fingers in her lap, twisting her hands nervously. She’d never been deeped before and it was a little frightening. “Could you turn off the wall?” she asked.

  “Of course,” smiled Sterning, and killed the hypnowall. The swirl of colors faded to black. “I really don’t need it in your case. I want you to be as comfortable as possible. Now...” He tented his hands. “How long were you a Saint?”

  She blinked rapidly. “For almost a year. One of the Gods selected me in
Omaha. They were there to flare and I offered...”

  “You offered your Eternal Self?”

  “Yes, that’s right. And they accepted me. One of them did, I mean.”

  “The one called Denbo, am I correct?”

  She nodded, flushing. “He took me. He sainted me.”

  Sterning bowed his head. “A rare sexual honor. A beautiful selection. And you are. Quite.”

  Tris blinked again. “Quite?”

  “Quite beautiful. Thighs... hips... breasts. You are ideally qualified for Sainthood.” He sighed. “Your situation is most unfortunate. But let’s get to it.”

  He moved around the desk, sat down close to her on the flowcouch, his dark eyes probing. “Lean back and relax. I’m going to deep you now. Close your eyes.”

  Tris shuddered; she knew there would be no pain, but the nakedness of it all! Her inner mind laid bare to another!

  “You needn’t be concerned about opening to me,” Sterning said. “It’s all quite normal. Deeping is a natural process for those of us who read. You have nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I know that,” said Tris. “But... it isn’t easy for me.”

  “Relax... just relax.”

  She settled back into the chair, her mind opening to his.

  Sterning shifted to a below-surface level, sighed. “Ah, sadness and guilt.” He began reading. “You were a truly passionate Saint and the Gods were pleased. And you got on well with all the other Saints, sharing their life and dedication until...”

  He hesitated, probing deeper. “Until you made a mistake which cost you Divine Favor.”

  “Yes,” murmured Tris. Her down-closed lashes quivered against her white cheek. “A mistake. I should never have—”

  “—criticized.” Sterning finished the thought. “You criticized a God and they banished you. Your comments were cruel, caustic.”

  “I was angry,” said Tris. “With Denbo.”

  “Because he was sexually favoring other Saints.”

  “Yes.”

  “But you had no right to be angry. A God may bestow his sexual favors where he will. That is his Divine right, is it not?”