The Nightmare People

5.

“How do you mean that?” Sandy asked.

Maggie moaned, and took a step back toward the bathroom.

“Mr. Smith,” Annie said, “You don’t mean we have to eat those things?”

Smith nodded. “I think we do,” he said. “I think that’s why Maggie’s bite hurt it. I think that’s the only way to kill them.”

An uncomfortable silence followed Smith’s pronouncement.

“Mr. Smith,” Annie asked at last, “How do you propose to test this theory?”

Smith shrugged. “I don’t know that I do propose to test it. I was just presenting it as I saw it.”

“Of course we’re going to test it!” Sandy said. “We’ve gotta kill those damned things!”

“But eat them…” Annie said, aghast.

Maggie moaned again.

“Maybe we wouldn’t need to eat all of one to kill it,” Smith said. “Maybe just the heart, same as a stake through the heart kills a vampire.”

“Mr. Smith,” Annie said, “I asked you before, and I’m asking again – how do you propose to find out?”

“Well, Ms. McGowan, I guess we’d have to try to eat one.”

Maggie ran for the bathroom again.

“We’ll need to get one of them alone,” Sandy said. “They don’t seem too eager to work together – I mean, the other two never attacked us when we set that one on fire – but we couldn’t expect them to just stand by. We couldn’t count on it.”

Smith nodded. “Maybe we could lure one here, somehow. We lured that one out to the woods, after all.”

“Not here!” Annie protested.

“Maybe at that house,” Khalil said, “Maybe we lure two of them away?”

Smith and Sandy looked at one another. Sandy nodded. “Yeah, we could try that,” he said. “Maggie must know someone else who knew Elias, someone who could lure him away.”

“Do we know which nightmare people they are?” Smith asked. “The one that got Elias was the one that used to be Mary, but what about the others?”

“Who cares?” Sandy asked.

“Maybe they do,” Smith said. “That one that was after me – it tried every night for five nights, and as far as I know it didn’t go after anyone else.”

Sandy shook his head. “Then why did that thing give up Mary’s skin to get Elias?”

Smith shrugged. “I don’t know. It did, though. And that other one, the one we burned, that used to be the Goodwin kid, judging by its voice. I guess they get tired and move on to the next victim, or something. But do they maybe still… I mean, if I tried to get Bill Goodwin for something, would that thing come, even though it’s not Goodwin any more?”

“Nah,” Sandy said. “Why should it?”

Smith had no answer to that.