The Voice of the Night

12

When Colin arrived home at twelve-thirty, his mother had not yet returned from her date with Mark Thornberg. Her car was not in the garage. The house was dark and forbidding.

He did not want to go inside by himself. He stared at the blank windows, at the pulsing darkness beyond the glass, and he suspected that something was waiting for him in there, some nightmare creature that intended to chew him up alive.

Stop it, stop it, stop it! he told himself angrily. There’s nothing waiting for you in there. Nothing. Don’t be so damned silly. Grow up! You want to be like Roy, so do exactly what Roy would do if he were here. Waltz right into the house, just like Roy would. Do it. Now. Go!

He fished the key out of a redwood planter that stood beside the walk. His hands shook. He thrust the key into the lock, hesitated, then found sufficient strength to open the door. He reached inside and switched on the light but didn’t step across the threshold.

The front room was deserted.

No monsters.

He went to the comer of the house, stepped behind a screen of bushes, and urinated. He didn’t want to have to use the bathroom when he got in the house. Something might be waiting there for him, waiting behind the door, behind the shower curtain, perhaps even in the clothes hamper, something dark and fast with wild eyes and lots of teeth and razor-sharp claws.

Got to stop thinking like this! he told himself. It’s crazy. Got to stop it. Grown-ups aren’t afraid of the dark. If I don’t get over this fear soon, I’m going to wind up in an asylum. Jeez.

He replaced the key in the planter and entered the house. He tried to swagger as Roy would have done; however, as if he were a giant marionette, he needed ropes of courage to hold him in a hero’s stance, but all that he could find within himself was one thin thread of bravery. He closed the door and put his back against it. He stood quite still, holding his breath, listening.

Ticking. An antique mantel clock.

Moaning. Wind pressing the windows.

Nothing else.

He locked the door behind him.

Paused.

Listened.

Silence.

Suddenly he dashed across the living room, dodging furniture, burst into the downstairs hallway, slapped the light switch there, saw nothing out of the ordinary, thundered up the stairs, turned on the second-floor hall lights, ran into his bedroom, hit the lights there, too, felt a tiny bit better when he saw he was still alone, jerked open the closet door, found no werewolves or vampires lurking among the clothes, shut the bedroom door, locked it, braced it with a straightbacked chair, drew the drapes over both windows so that nothing could look in at him, and collapsed onto the mattress, gasping. He didn’t have to look under the bed: It was a platform job, built right on the floor.

He would be safe until morning-unless, of course, something broke down the door in spite of the chair that was wedged under the knob.

Stop it!

He got up, undressed, put on a pair of blue pajamas, set the clock for six-thirty so he’d be ready when his dad arrived, slipped under the sheet, and fluffed his pillow. When he took off his glasses, the room turned fuzzy at the edges, but he had secured the territory and didn’t have to be 100 percent watchful. He stretched out on his back, and for a long time he lay listening to the house.

Click! Creeeeeaaak … A soft groan, a brief rattle, a barely audible squeak. Just the normal sounds of a house. Settling noises. Nothing more than that.

Even when his mother was home, Colin slept with a night light. But tonight, unless she returned before he fell asleep, he would leave all the lamps burning. The room was as bright as an operating theater that had been prepared for surgery.

The sight of his possessions provided him with a little comfort. Five hundred paperbacks filled two tall shelves. The walls were decorated with posters: Bela Lugosi in Dracula; Christopher Lee in The Horror of Dracula; the monster in The Creature from the Black Lagoon; Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolfman; the monster from Ridley Scott’s Alien; and the spooky night-highway poster from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. His monster models, which he had built himself from kits, were arranged on a table beside his desk. A plastic ghoul lurched forever through a hand-painted graveyard. Frankenstein’s creation stood with plastic arms outstretched, face frozen in a snarl of pure hatred. There were a dozen models in all. The many hours he had spent building them had been hours during which he’d been able to suppress his fear of the night and his awareness of its sinister voice; for so long as he had held those plastic symbols of evil in his hands, he had felt in control of them, master of them, and, curiously, he had felt superior to the very real monsters they represented.

Click!

Creeeeeaaak…

After a while he became accustomed to the noises made by the house and almost ceased to hear them. He heard, instead, the voice of the night, the voice that no one else seemed able to hear. It was there from sundown to sunrise, a constant evil presence, a supernatural phenomenon, the voice of the dead who wanted to come back from their graves, the voice of the Devil. It jabbered insanely, cackled, chuckled, wheezed, hissed, murmured about blood and death. In sepulchral tones, it spoke of the dank and airless crypt, of the dead who still walked, of flesh riddled with worms. To most of the world, it was a subliminal voice and spoke only to the subconscious mind; but Colin was very aware of it. A steady whisper. Sometimes a shout. Sometimes even a loud scream.

One o‘clock.

Where in the hell was his mother?

Tap-tap-tap!

Something at the window.

Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap. Tap.

Just a big moth bumping against the glass. That was it. That had to be it. Just a moth.

One-thirty.

He had been spending nearly every night alone. He didn’t mind eating supper by himself. She had to work a lot, and she had every right to date men now that she was single again. But did she have to leave him alone every night at bedtime?

Tap-tap.

The moth again.

Tap-tap-tap.

He tried to tune out the moth and think about Roy. What a guy Roy was. What a great friend. What a truly terrific buddy. Blood brothers. He could still feel the shallow puncture in the palm of his hand; it throbbed faintly. Roy was on his side, there to help, now and forever, always and always, or at least until one of them died. That’s what it meant to be blood brothers. Roy would protect him.

He thought about his best friend, papered over the visions of monsters with images of Roy Borden, blocked out the voice of the night with memories of Roy’s voice, and shortly before two o‘clock he drifted into sleep. But there were nightmares.