The Nightmare People

7.

As he passed the Willow Street fork he began to slow down.

By the time he reached the entrance to the Bedford Mills complex he was creeping along at little more than walking speed, and on the small bump that marked the division between street and lot he let the car come to a full stop.

It was mid-afternoon, and sweltering hot. He had eaten lunch, found himself a new apartment over in Gaithersburg that would be available Wednesday and only cost about twice what it should, and it was time to come and look over his old place, pack up a few useful things and load them in the car. He was tired of living out of a hastily-packed suitcase.

But this place was full of monsters.

One of them was apparently living in his own apartment.

What would he do if he walked in the door and came face to face with that thing?

He hadn’t entirely worked that out, but his new folding knife was in his hip pocket, and the crowbar was on the seat beside him, waiting for him.

Sooner or later, he would have to face this. He was not going to abandon all his belongings. His books, his stereo, his Kaypro 2000 laptop – he was not going to just leave them.

He stepped on the gas, and the Chevy rolled forward into the lot.

The lot was fuller than usual for this time of the afternoon on a weekday, even a Friday; he glanced at his watch, and saw that it wasn’t even 4:30 yet. Mildly puzzled, he found a space in front of C building and pulled in.

He glanced around carefully before shutting off the engine, but he saw no one. He picked up the crowbar and hefted it, then climbed out of the car.

He left the door unlocked, just in case he had to leave quickly, and stuffed the keys well down into his pocket, where they wouldn’t fall out accidentally.

Then, crowbar in hand, he entered the building.

The stairwell was empty and quiet, and seemed even more dusty than usual. He tried to move silently as he climbed the stairs, pausing on each landing to look ahead and make sure no one was waiting for him.

At the top he headed for the door to C41, and his hand fell to his keys from habit, but he stopped himself before he put the key in the lock. He leaned forward and peered into the peephole.

It didn’t work properly in this direction, and in any case could only show him a small part of the interior, but he stared through it anyway.

Nothing looked wrong. Nobody was there. Everything was as he had left it.

He unlocked the door, pocketed the key, and then shifted the crowbar to his right hand and adjusted his grip. He took a deep breath, and swung open the door.

He had half expected to find the place torn up, as burglars might have left it, but nothing had been disturbed. Everything was just as he had left it on Wednesday afternoon.

The air conditioning still hadn’t been fixed, and the apartment was like an oven, but it was otherwise undisturbed.

He had not expected to see the nightmare person in it, and he didn’t. The apartment was empty.

Somehow, he simply couldn’t imagine seeing that creature in full daylight, and the bright August sunlight was pouring in every window.

Of course, the creature had to be somewhere, and it had answered his phone in daylight – though that had been morning, when his side of the building was in shadow.

Still, he somehow hadn’t expected to find it here.

He moved cautiously through the place, checking the living room, the dining area, the tiny walk-through kitchen, then down the hall, a quick look in the bathroom, and into the front bedroom that he had used as his library-cum-office.

Nothing had been disturbed. The laptop computer was packed up and sitting beside the bookcase, and his main machine, a customized Compaq Deskpro 386, was on the desk.

The dustcover was off the monitor, and he tried to remember whether he had left it that way or not.

After a moment’s thought he decided he had. He usually did.

He went on to the bedroom, but nothing was out of place there, either.

There was no sign that the monster had ever dared to intrude here.

He wondered, for an instant, where it was just now, and then suppressed the thought. It wasn’t here, and that was enough.

He held onto the crowbar, though, as he began planning what to take with him.

The first thing to get was the laptop, he decided as he emerged into the hallway again, and second would be the Compaq. With those in his possession he would be much more in control of things, he thought. He’d also have something better to do than watch TV all night.

Someone knocked at the door.

He froze.

Another knock sounded.

“Who is it?” he called.

After all, he tried to tell himself, it didn’t have to be one of the monsters. It could be Lieutenant Buckley, or Einar come to check on his story, or any number of other people.

“Mr. Smith? It’s me, Bill Goodwin, from downstairs.”

He hesitated, unsure what to do.

The Goodwin boy was one of them, wasn’t he? He was the one who had alerted them all after spotting Smith coming out of the Orchard Heights basement, so that they could clear out the bones and paint over the blood in time.

But this might be a chance to learn more about what was really going on, if he could talk to one of them. And if it was just the one of them, in broad daylight – and Bill wasn’t that big, and he had his crowbar…

“Just a minute!” Smith called.

He crossed the living room and peered through the peephole.

It looked like Bill Goodwin, certainly, standing there in cut-off shorts and an old Metallica T-shirt. And he couldn’t see anybody else.

He hooked the chain-bolt, opened the door a crack, and looked out.

He still saw nobody else.

“All right, come in,” he said, opening the door wide.

“Hey, I didn’t mean…”

“Get in here!” Smith bellowed, startling them both.

“Okay, okay!” The boy ducked quickly inside, and Smith slammed and locked the door behind him.

Then he turned to face his guest, still holding his crowbar, and gestured toward the chairs over by the windows. “Have a seat,” he said.

He wanted the boy in the sunlight. He couldn’t have said why; it just seemed safer, somehow.

“Sure,” the lad said, dropping onto one of the chairs. “Hey, what’s with the wrecking bar?”

Smith settled slowly onto the other chair, never loosening his grip on the crowbar and never taking his eyes off his guest. “Just a precaution,” he said. “I think somebody broke in here while I was out.”

The other made a wordless noise of concern.

Whoever and whatever he was talking to, it looked like Bill Goodwin. It sounded exactly like him, even moved like him.

“How’re your folks?” Smith asked.

Goodwin, if it really was he, shrugged. “They’re fine.”

For a moment they both just sat, staring at each other.

“So what brings you up here?” Smith asked at last.

Goodwin shrugged again. “Oh, well, I saw your car in the lot, and you hadn’t been around the last couple of days, so I wondered if there was anything wrong, and if there was anything, y’know, that I could do to help out.”

Smith eyed him warily.

He looked human. His eyes were blue, not red. Smith thought he might have seen a slight silvery glint to his teeth when he spoke, but that might just have been fillings, and it was too quick to be certain of anything.

He looked right. He sounded right.

Still, something was slightly off. Smith puzzled over it for a moment, while Goodwin shifted nervously under his scrutiny.

“Hey,” Goodwin said at last, “If you’re okay, I guess I’ll go.”

“No, wait,” Smith said, raising a hand – his left, since the crowbar was still in his right. He thought the teeth might have glinted again, and he felt as if any moment he would sense what was wrong, why he didn’t believe he was really talking to the Bill Goodwin he knew.

“Fact is,” Smith said, “that I’m planning to move out of here. That… that whatever-it-was on Wednesday made me nervous, you know? And I could probably use a hand loading the car, when I get everything ready to go. Think you could help me out?”

“Sure,” Goodwin said, shrugging. “No sweat.”

That was it!

That was what was wrong, Smith realized. He couldn’t smell anything.

No sweat.

That is, he couldn’t smell anything but his own scent and his apartment’s normal dusty odor. Goodwin gave off no odor at all, so far as he could tell. No sweat, no deodorant, no aftershave, no hair oil, nothing. And there was no dampness to his T-shirt, no sheen of moisture on his forehead.

It was a hot day, outside and in, and Goodwin had just come up three flights of stairs and into a baking-hot apartment. He was a healthy young male, and not over-scrupulous about bathing. He ought to have an odor – nothing offensive, nothing anyone would ordinarily notice, but something.

And in that T-shirt, he ought to be visibly sweating. Smith knew that his own shirt was damp under the arms and across the back of his shoulders. He could feel a film of perspiration on his forehead, and imagined it would be visibly shiny.

Bill Goodwin’s shirt and forehead looked totally dry.

Before he could stop himself, Smith blurted, “What the hell are you, anyway?”

The Goodwin thing blinked at him. It started to grin, and its teeth gleamed silver, but then it stopped, pulled its lips back together.

“What?” it said. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” Smith said quickly. On an impulse, he rose from his chair, transferred the crowbar to his left hand and stuck out his right, offering to shake. He wanted to know what the thing felt like, whether its skin was really as dry as it looked.

“I’ll be moving Wednesday, I think,” Smith said. “See you then?”

Startled, the creature stood and took his hand. “Sure,” it said, “Wednesday.”

The hand felt cool and dry and lifeless, more like a glove than like living flesh. “Thanks,” Smith said.

“No problem,” it answered. It hesitated, then started toward the door.

Smith came along behind it, the crowbar ready in one hand. Without warning, he threw the other arm around the Goodwin creature’s shoulders in a comradely gesture.

“I really appreciate this,” he said.

The T-shirt was completely dry. The skin at the back of the thing’s neck was as cold and dead as its palm, maybe more so.

As Smith pulled his hand away, as his fingers slid across the back of the thing’s neck, he hooked them into claws, nails scraping at the skin.

The Goodwin thing didn’t seem to notice.

Smith’s hand came away and he stuck it immediately in his pocket, and kept it there. He stepped back and let the creature open the door itself, rather than either putting down the crowbar or taking his other hand back out of the pocket again.

That step back gave him a clear view of where his fingernails had scraped.

“Well, see you Wednesday,” the thing said as it turned in the doorway.

“Right, thanks,” Smith said, trying very hard not to tremble.

The creature stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind it.

Smith pulled his hand from his pocket.

Where he had scratched the thing, something had come away. When he had looked at the back of its neck he had seen a hole, a hole where something damp and slick and grey had showed through the skin, something the color of wet modeling clay. There was no bleeding or oozing, just that greyness.

The piece that had come away was still in his fingers, and he held it up to the light. It was a sliver of translucent material, dry on one side and damp on the other, about two inches long and half an inch wide across the middle, no thicker than the fabric of a pair of jeans.

Even though he had never encountered such a thing in quite this form before, there was no doubt about what it was.

He was holding a piece of human skin.

Chapter Four:

Saturday, August 5th