The Nightmare People

5.

Elias’s father was named Youssef Samaan, according to his birth certificate, but he called himself “Joe” to sound more American. He considered himself a good, solid American, and as such he didn’t like blacks, Hispanics, or smart-ass do-gooders. He didn’t trust the police, or the courts, or his neighbors.

What he did trust was the.45 he kept in the drawer by his bed.

Joe Samaan had started drinking on the way home from work the night before, and had gone on drinking until the bars closed. Then he had gone home and polished off the bottle of gin he kept in the linen closet for emergencies. He went on these binges every so often – and with increasing frequency of late. Never more than once a week, though. Never on weekdays. He knew better than to drink on the job, or risk missing work. He only drank on Friday nights, maybe on Saturdays, and not every week.

Most weeks, maybe, but not every week.

He had finally fallen onto the bed around four a.m., and had stayed there, not moving, ever since.

He never even stirred as Elias removed the gun from its hiding place and slipped out of the house, out to the driveway, where Smith’s Chevy waited.

Maggie stared at the weapon apprehensively as Elias climbed back into the car.

“I was thinking,” Elias said, as he sat back with the gun in his lap, “This might not work. I mean, in all the stories, bullets won’t kill vampires.”

“These aren’t vampires,” Smith said for what seemed like the hundredth time, as he started the engine.

“Yeah, but they’re like vampires,” Elias insisted, “So maybe the gun can’t hurt them.”

“What about silver bullets?” Maggie asked.

“That’s werewolves,” Elias said in prompt dismissal.

“Well,” Maggie began, “Maybe these things are like werewolves…”

“Jesus!” Smith burst out, stamping suddenly on the brake and bringing the car to an abrupt halt, halfway out of the driveway into the street. “Listen to you two! Vampires! Werewolves! Jesus fuckin’ Christ, this is not some damn horror movie, this is real!”

His outburst was followed by a moment of silence. Maggie pushed herself back against the door of the car, trying to make herself as small as possible.

Elias was blinking, startled, but not abashed.

“But, Mr. Smith,” he said, “What are they, then, if they aren’t vampires?”

“I don’t know, damn it, but they aren’t vampires! There’s nobody in any black capes turning into bats and sucking blood! And werewolves…”

“So they aren’t vampires,” Elias said, “or werewolves, but they are monsters, right?”

“Yes!” Smith snapped.

“But then… listen to me, please, before you yell again, Mr. Smith. Do you know where the unicorn legend comes from?”

Smith stared at Elias in baffled anger. “What?”

“Do you know where the story of the unicorn first came from?” Elias insisted.

“No; do you?”

“Yeah, I do,” Elias replied. “It’s no big secret. If you work your way back through older and older descriptions of unicorns, you can see it; I read about it a couple of places. What happened was that travelers to Africa and India brought back descriptions of what they’d seen there, including an animal they called a unicorn, because it had just one horn. It’s Latin…”

“I know that,” Smith growled. “Unicorn, one horn. Go on.”

“Right. Well, they didn’t have any pictures, so all they could do was to describe what they’d seen in terms of what the people they were talking to already knew. So they said that a unicorn had a head and body shaped sort of like a huge warhorse, with a horn on its face, and with a tail like an ass, and with great flat feet like an elephant.”

“Wait a minute… feet like an elephant?”

“That was part of the early descriptions, yeah,” Elias said. “It sort of faded out of them over time.”

“Go on,” Smith said.

“Well, that was the description they gave,” Elias said, “And that was what the pictures were drawn from, by people who had never seen a unicorn. And the travelers said that nobody could get near a unicorn, and that became the whole thing about only virgins approaching them, somehow, even though what the travelers meant was that the things were big and stupid and dangerous and would charge at anyone who came near them. And the locals in India used the horn as an aphrodisiac, because it looked phallic, and that became all the stuff about the magical healing.”

“You’re telling me,” Smith said slowly, “that a unicorn is the same thing as a rhinoceros?”

Elias nodded. “Yeah. Not the same thing, though; it’s what was left of the rhinoceros after five hundred years of legends getting handed down by word of mouth.”

“A unicorn’s a rhinoceros?” Maggie asked, confused.

“Yeah,” Elias said. “And we’ve heard vampire stories the same way we’ve heard unicorn stories. Except these things here aren’t unicorns, they’re the real thing, the rhinoceros. They’re what the vampire stories started out from, before everything got twisted around.”

Smith released the brake, and the car rolled out into the street.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you’re right, but I don’t know. And even if you are, it doesn’t prove anything about what they’re like.”

“I know,” Elias admitted, “it doesn’t, not really – but that stuff about vampires being hard to kill must come from somewhere.”

“Like the stuff about virgins and unicorns, huh?” Smith said.

Elias had no answer for that one.

They drove on in silence for a moment, and then Maggie said, “Wait a minute.”

“What?” Smith asked, slowing slightly, but not stopping.

“If the gun won’t hurt them, why’d Elias want to get it? What are we going to do with it?”

Elias said sheepishly, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Maggie turned and glared at him. Of all the times for Elias Samaan, of all people, to turn macho and want to play with his father’s gun! “You mean we don’t need it for anything,” she accused.

Elias shrugged.

“I think we should try it,” Smith said suddenly.

“Try what?” Maggie asked.

“Shooting them. It might work.”

“Yeah, but if it doesn’t…” Elias began.

As Maggie looked back at the.45 and saw Elias’s hands tremble slightly holding it, the reality of the situation sank in.

That was a gun. A real gun, that fired real bullets. And they were talking about really shooting somebody with it.

“That’s murder!” she said.

“No, it isn’t,” Smith said, “It’s… they’re not human. They’re monsters.”

“That’s what the Nazis said about the Jews,” Maggie said.

“Hey!” Elias protested.

“The Jews didn’t eat anybody,” Smith retorted. “These things did. The Jews didn’t dress themselves in other people’s skins, they didn’t leave blood and bones scattered all over an empty basement, they didn’t peer in anybody’s window in the middle of the night with teeth like steel needles…”

“That’s what you say these things did,” Maggie yelled. “Nobody’s been peeking in my window, and I haven’t seen any blood or anything!”

Smith drove on without comment for a few seconds, as Elias tried to protest and Maggie shouted him down.

“Was that Bill Goodwin you talked to this morning?” Smith asked softly.

Maggie quieted, and they rode on.

“Take me home,” she said suddenly.

Smith glanced at her.

“Take me home,” she insisted. “Maybe you’re right, maybe they’re monsters, but I’m not ready for this. I can’t just go along and watch you shoot somebody – or some thing. What if we’re all wrong, somehow? Then it’s murder! Or what if Elias’s right, and shooting them doesn’t kill them? They’ll kill us. And even if it does kill them, and they are monsters, are we going to shoot all a hundred and whatever it is of them?”

“We’re going to start with one,” Smith said, tense, “And see what happens.”

“You guys go ahead,” Maggie said, “But take me home first.”

Smith glanced back at Elias, who shrugged helplessly.

“Okay,” Smith said, resignedly. “If you change your mind, let us know.”

He turned the car back toward Amber Crescent.