The Nightmare People

2.

He didn’t like the idea of real monsters lurking outside his windows, but they had certainly looked real. The true skeptic, he remembered reading somewhere, doesn’t take anything on faith, and that includes the non-existence of the supernatural, just as much as its existence.

Suppose, then, that the monsters he saw were real. How did that fit the facts?

He sopped up some runny yolk and lifted the fork to his mouth as he thought that over.

If the monsters were real, then they presumably had some unusual abilities, in order to appear outside a fourth-floor window and vanish so abruptly.

If the monsters were real, then Nora Hagarty and Mrs. Malinoff were monsters – he had seen that with his own eyes. That would explain the hat and the eyes.

The knee could be explained by assuming that Mrs. Malinoff – the real Mrs. Malinoff – had been a normal human being, and had been replaced by a monster in her shape.

Walt Harris could be a monster, or could be a human being working with the monsters. His face had never displayed any inhuman characteristics.

What about the disappearance?

He dabbed a bit of yolk off his chin as he considered that.

The monsters had been responsible, he supposed. The fact that everything at Bedford Mills had seemed perfectly normal on Tuesday, but on Wednesday everyone had vanished temporarily and when they came back at least two of them were no longer human, certainly seemed to imply…

He stopped at that point, his fork dangling from one hand, his napkin in the other.

What on Earth was he thinking? This was like something out of a horror movie. “…two of them were no longer human…?”

But he had seen the monsters. He had seen that hat, and Mrs. Malinoff’s smile. All his neighbors had vanished.

He clenched his jaw for a moment and told himself that he would think it through, no matter how ridiculous it sounded.

Suppose, then, that all his neighbors had been herded away by the monsters, and that when they came back some of them had become monsters.

Why had he been neglected? Because he slept too soundly?

Wasn’t anybody else in the entire complex a sound sleeper?

And why wouldn’t the monsters have found some way to awaken him, if that was what they wanted?

Another possibility occurred to him, and suddenly seemed to make far more sense.

What if the monsters had not come at five in the morning, but at three?

What if he had been skipped not because he was asleep, but because he was awake? Because he had seen the thing outside his window?

It was far more believable that only one out of a hundred and forty-four people would be awake at three in the morning, than that only one would sleep too soundly to be awakened at five.

That would do for a provisional explanation.

And at the motel, the four of them had fled when he started screaming. That seemed to fit. They preferred sleeping victims, or at least unresisting ones.

The four of them – four monsters?

Only four?

They had taken a hundred and forty-three people away, and at least two had come back as monsters. One monster, the one who had appeared at his own window, apparently still had no human disguise.

What if all of them had come back as monsters?

What if the one he had seen outside his window had been meant to replace him?

What if it was still after him? What if it had come back for a second try and brought along friends to help, in case he resisted? What if that was why the four of them had all been at his window?

What would have happened if he hadn’t screamed?

He put down the fork and the napkin and stared at the eggs on his plate, and suddenly had no appetite for them. He picked up his cup and gulped coffee.

When he lowered the cup again he grimaced.

He had two explanations, so far – real supernatural monsters that only he had seen, or an incredibly complicated practical joke directed at him.

Neither one seemed very likely, and a third possibility occurred to him, one he didn’t like to think about, but one that certainly made as much sense as either of the others.

Maybe he had imagined the entire thing, from start to finish. Maybe none of it was real at all.

Maybe he’d gone mad.