The Nightmare People

5.

He was the only customer at Denny’s when he first got there, at about five, but by the time he’d finished his meal the place had acquired a dozen or so other patrons, and the sky was pale blue above the motel and the railroad tracks.

His long night was beginning to wear on him; he was ready to go to bed, though he’d only been up for about ten hours. His body wanted rest, wanted to get back on something resembling a normal schedule, rather than the weird reversal of day and night he had just lived through.

He’d been on a normal schedule until Tuesday night, when the air conditioner had been broken.

He’d slept from 3:30 until 11:20 Wednesday morning, maybe napped briefly Wednesday night, and then slept from sometime Thursday morning – he really didn’t know just when – until about 7:00 p.m. on Thursday evening. That was, effectively, two nights’ sleep in three days. Here it was Friday morning, and that was catching up with him. He wasn’t a college kid any more, able to pull an all-nighter for a term paper or a poker game without suffering for it.

The constant nervousness, the strain he was under, hadn’t helped a bit.

If he went to bed, he guessed he would sleep for eight hours again, which would mean getting up around mid-afternoon.

If he stayed up – and he wasn’t so worn that his ability to stay awake was seriously in doubt – he could probably hold out until early evening, go to bed, and get up for a somewhat early Saturday morning. If he could manage that, he’d probably be back to normal by Monday, ready to go to work.

Of course, that would mean sleeping at night, in the dark, and something in the back of his mind didn’t like that idea at all. What if his earlier guess about the monsters had been right? What if they could only… could only do whatever it was they did at night, and only when the victim was sleeping?

They knew where his motel room was, and he couldn’t retreat to George’s couch.

He left the rest of his coffee untouched, and substituted another glass of orange juice. When that was gone, he went back to his room, where he dropped into bed, still clothed, and fell quickly asleep.