The Nightmare People

4.

Simply walking into the Bedford Mills complex, he decided as he waited for a chance to make his left turn onto Route 124, would be too much like entering the locked room, the haunted house, the forbidden vault – if there were really monsters there, he’d be asking for it by doing anything so foolhardy.

In fact, walking in anywhere with nothing but the clothes on his back would be stupid. He abruptly changed his mind and turned right, instead of left, when a break in traffic finally appeared.

A quick switch to the left lane as he went under I-270, and he turned left at the light, onto Route 355 northbound.

Most of the traffic was southbound this time of day, in toward Washington, so he was able to get up a little speed. Then a kid in a battered green pickup cut him off, and he leaned on the horn for a moment, almost missing the entrance to the new Hechinger’s. His rear wheels slewed a bit on the gravel at the corner as he took the turn too fast, but then he was safely into the mostly-empty parking lot.

It was mostly empty for a good reason, he realized when he looked at the dark facade – the place wasn’t open yet.

He looked at his watch and saw 8:17; he sighed, unbuckled his harness, and got out of the car.

He stood for a moment looking at the store, then closed and locked the car and crossed to the concrete apron.

A small sign on the door gave the hours, starting at 8:30. He looked at his watch again – 8:18.

He tried to think of someplace that would already be open, and decided that 84 Lumber on Bureau Drive might be, or Barron’s down by the Cuddy Bridge, but by the time he could fight his way through the traffic to either one it would be 8:30.

He waited.

At 8:28 a black-haired kid in a red Hechinger’s vest unlocked the door.

Smith had had time to consider what he wanted, and wasted no time in finding it.

His first selection was a small heavy-duty crowbar, eighteen inches of blue-painted steel. He passed up the axe-handles as being too obviously intended as weapons. Carrying a crowbar around an apartment complex or construction site, unusual though it might be, seemed reasonable enough; carrying an axe handle did not.

The larger crowbars he looked over carefully, but in the end he decided they would be too large and conspicuous, and he limited himself to the little one.

Besides, it was cheaper.

He followed that up with a sturdy rechargeable flashlight, after hesitating briefly over a pump-charged version.

The hand-pump light couldn’t give out on him, but the rechargeable was brighter and easier to hold.

While waiting at the door he’d thought about guns, and decided against buying one. He wasn’t sure whether Hechinger’s even carried them, anyway. He’d never owned one, hadn’t fired one since high school back in Massachusetts, and had no idea what the local laws were about permits, concealed weapons, discharging firearms, whatever.

Besides, guns were too dangerous. He might shoot too soon or too late, he might miss what he aimed at, he might get himself killed or arrested. The crowbar was better.

All the same, he added a good-quality four-inch-blade jackknife to his collection, as back-up for the crowbar.

He tried to think what else he might need, but his brain didn’t want to work. As he hefted the crowbar his knees seemed to weaken, and his shins trembled slightly. The solid reality of the wrecking tool in his hand seemed to bring home, more than all his plans or the weird late-night visitations, that he was involved in something real, something serious, something dangerous.

He forced a deep breath down, held it for a second, and then marched up to the check-out with his supplies.

The yawning clerk barely glanced at him as she rang up the bar, light, and knife. He handed her his MasterCard, and she gave the slip of plastic more attention than she had its owner.

“You want a bag for that?” she asked, handing back the card.

“Don’t bother,” he said, slipping the jackknife into one hip pocket, his wallet into the other. He took the receipt from her, stuffed it in his shirt pocket, then picked up the bar and light and left.

Back in the car he dropped the crowbar and flashlight on the passenger seat and started the engine.

Was there anything else he needed?

A sudden revulsion at further delay made him thrust that thought aside. He needed to get at it; he needed to find out what was going on. He released the brake and rolled.

Getting from the parking lot back out onto 355, and into the rush-hour traffic, took a few minutes; then he crept along past the IBM plant, surrounded by commuters, until he reached the turn for 124.

Traffic was lighter there, and thinned out even more once he was past the entrance ramps for I-270.

When he turned onto Clopper Road he was going against the traffic. He sailed past the turn for the MVA, past the townhouses and the new construction, to the left turn onto Barrett.

The morning sun slanted down through the trees, flickering across his windshield, as he drove through the state park; it poured down steadily over the lake as he crossed the dam back into Diamond Park.

He almost missed the turn he wanted. His apartment, the whole Bedford Mills complex, was on Barrett, so his habits were all set for that, but that wasn’t where he was going this time. Instead he took the right fork onto Willow Street.

Willow Street was empty, and the emptiness was suddenly oppressive; he turned on the radio and got Harris In The Morning on WCXR, introducing another forty-five minute block of non-stop classic rock. He turned left onto Orchard Heights Road to the sound of Pat Benatar.

The trees vanished on the right, replaced by bare dirt and weathered two-by-fours behind chain-link fence. He pulled over, slowing gradually to a stop, in front of the unfinished centerpiece building of the Orchard Heights Office Park.

He set the brake and turned off the engine, and the sound of the radio died away abruptly, leaving him in near-silence. The hum of distant traffic was barely audible, and a bird was singing somewhere.

He sat for a moment, listening, and looking over the site.

The builder had gotten the steel frame up, and the floors, and had had the brick facade about half-done when the money ran out. The south wall rose up above the three-storey frame in an unsupported brick gable, a pink brick triangle stabbing at the sky; the west wall, facing him, was three stories high at the south end, only one at the north, the steel frame behind it thrusting up on the left like the bare flesh revealed by an off-the-shoulder gown.

The east wall, the far side, was invisible. The north end wasn’t there at all.

The whole thing looked crooked, and he wondered why the builder had done it that way, instead of building the walls up evenly on all four sides.

Then he shrugged; it didn’t matter. He got out of the car, the crowbar in hand.