The Nightmare People

7.

Maggie stared at the phone for a long moment.

She had called everyone she could think of – sweet old Annie, and that crazy Khalil, and that rotten Sandy Niklasen, and the Newells. She had called Elias Samaan, and talked to him for awhile. She had called Smith back.

And she still needed to talk. She was still scared, still confused, still twisted around.

But she’d called them all, everyone she could think of that she could find a number for and that wasn’t out of town on vacation or something. Elias, Khalil, Annie, Sandy, the Newells, Ed Smith – that was everybody. There was nobody else left that she could call about the monsters.

Nobody, that is, except the monsters themselves.

Without knowing why, she dialed the Goodwins’ number.

“Hello?”

Mrs. Goodwin’s voice. Even if it wasn’t really her, the voice was still the same. “Hi,” Maggie said. “Is Bill there?”

“Just a minute.”

A sudden panic swept over her. What was she going to say?

Would she pretend it was really Bill, her old familiar BIll, and talk to it as if nothing had happened? Would they talk about friends and movies and TV and sex, just like any ordinary couple?

Could that thing carry on a real conversation? That morning it hadn’t seemed to know what was going on. It hadn’t gotten her jokes. It hadn’t followed any of the gossip about their friends. It hadn’t watched any of the TV shows she talked about.

Did monsters watch TV?

What would she say to it?

If she didn’t pretend, if she treated it as the monster it was, what would she say to it?

Was there anything she could tell it, anything she needed to ask?

What did she really need to know? “Hello?” Bill’s voice said in her ear.

Her voice burst from her. “Why?” she asked it, without thinking. “Why did you kill him?”

For a moment there was only silence on the line.

Then Bill’s voice asked calmly, “Have you ever wondered about the nature of evil?”

Chapter Six:

Sunday, August 6th