The Nightmare People

4.

Admiring monuments is all very well, Smith decided, but in the muggy August weather, even at night, he didn’t care to do much walking or climbing, and staying in his air-conditioned car put serious limitations on what he could see or do – not to mention that Washington was reportedly not a particularly safe place to walk at night. The national capital was the national murder capital as well, after all – there had been something like two hundred and fifty homicides in the District so far this year.

Of course, nobody got shot by crack dealers on the Mall, whatever the hour, and he wasn’t about to go wandering through the streets of Anacostia. All the same, except for a quick jaunt past the Vietnam Memorial over to the Reflecting Pool and back, he had stayed in his car.

Nobody had bothered him during his walk; he had glimpsed a few other people strolling the area, but they were just dark shapes in the distance.

He drove around the Washington Monument once more, and then, at about 3:30, he headed back out of the city, taking 18th Street north to Connecticut Avenue and following that straight out to the Beltway.

The city streets were almost empty; he saw an occasional taxi here and there, but for the most part there was no traffic. The only delays on Connecticut were the traffic lights, but despite the hour he didn’t care to run them. He wasn’t in any hurry.

There were other cars on the Beltway and I-270, of course. There were always cars on the Beltway and I-270, at any hour of day or night. Traffic wasn’t heavy enough to get in his way, though.

At twenty past four he hit the ramp off I-270 at Exit 10 and followed the loop around onto 117. Right up until he passed Bureau Drive and the entrance to the National Institute of Standards and Technology, he wasn’t sure where he was going.

If he turned right onto 124, he’d be back at the motel in seconds.

If he went straight through the light he’d be on his way back to Diamond Park, where he could take another look at that unfinished building, or drive past his old apartment, and see if anything had changed.

There might be yellow-tape police lines around the office park. That would be worth seeing. It would mean that his call had done something.

That decided him. He stayed on 117 until he reached Barrett, where he turned left.

Then he cruised through the trees and across the dam, Lake Clopper pitch-black in the darkness, far darker than the sky overhead. He turned right on Willow and then left onto Orchard Heights Road.

The abandoned office park was on the left, the fence gleaming faintly beneath the streetlights.

There wasn’t any tape.

He continued on down to Diamond Park Avenue, turned right and passed the dark shops of the town’s commercial district, turned right again onto Willow, and came back up to Orchard Heights for another pass.

There was no tape. The unfinished building was just as he had left it.

There were no vehicles anywhere.

There were no visible tire-tracks.

There was no sign that the police, or anyone else, had been anywhere near the place.

He drove on past at a crawl, then gradually let his car pick up to a more normal speed until he came again to the intersection with Diamond Park Avenue.

This time he turned left, past the Safeway, and then left again on Barrett.

That took him by the Bedford Mills Apartments, and he inched past with his foot lightly touching the brake, the speedometer needle resting against the peg at 5 MPH. (Why, he wondered when he noticed that, didn’t it go all the way down to zero?) He stared at the complex as he passed.

The parking lot was full. Most of the windows were dark; yellow light showed in a scattered few, squares of rich color showing through the grey darkness of the walls. The blank outer faces of A and D buildings were featureless slabs of blackness.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

He noticed that most of the lights seemed to be in C building. There were lights in three apartments there.

In fact, his own lights were on.

He stopped the car, looked for traffic, and, seeing none, backed up a few yards and stopped again. He leaned close to the glass and looked again.

The lights were on in the living room and bedroom of his apartment.

He felt himself shiver slightly, and tried to tell himself that it was because he had the air conditioning turned up too high. He rolled down the window and leaned out.

Warm, sticky air bathed his face as he looked up at the windows on the top floor of C building.

Something moved in his apartment; he saw a dark figure outlined briefly against the glass in the living room, as if someone were taking a quick look out through the drapes, and then the drapes fell back in place and it was gone again.

He hadn’t been able to make out any detail. It was just a tall, thin figure, black against the light, and it was there and then it wasn’t.

He stared up at those closed drapes and the yellow light that poured through them for a long, long moment. Then he pulled his head back into the car, rolled the window up, and stepped on the gas.