The Nightmare People

4.

Breaking into a locked house in broad daylight was a new experience for Smith, but with his crowbar it wasn’t particularly difficult. The back door of the Samaan house gave way easily.

He just hoped none of the neighbors had noticed anything.

Most of them were probably at work, he figured, or otherwise out for the day – it was late morning, almost eleven. And the others would probably be sitting inside, watching TV. The weather was beautiful, sunny and pleasantly cool – but who noticed that on a weekday morning?

And in August, people might not want to be out when it was this cool.

Despite the temperature, forcing the door had been enough to work up a little sweat. Smith stepped inside, with Khalil at his heels.

They were in the living room, where they had fled after burning the skin off the false Hanna Samaan, and it appeared that no one had bothered to move a thing since then. A few spatters of dried blood, Sandy’s blood, still spotted the carpet in an uneven line from the foyer to the deck; black flakes of ash were scattered everywhere, and the room stank of lighter fluid and smoke.

It felt deserted.

Smith tried to ignore that feeling; after all, the nightmare people weren’t human. They wouldn’t necessarily be tidy housekeepers. They were kin to vampires, which had traditionally dwelt in ruins and decay.

Even so, the air in this house felt undisturbed and empty. It wasn’t just the ash or the blood or the smell, but something subtle and undefineable.

Khalil carefully slid the door closed, and then drew the heavy carving knife from his belt. Smith equally carefully placed the crowbar on the floor and drew his own blade.

They stepped forward, watching all sides. Staying together, they crossed to the foyer.

The ash was thicker here, and scorched remnants of Hanna Samaan’s housedress lay on the tile floor. One blue terrycloth slipper leaned against a wall; there was no sign of its mate.

Smith backed up into the living room, then led the way into the kitchen.

It was as deserted as the living room. Likewise the dining room and the den and the powder room.

Then it was Khalil’s turn to lead, up the stairs and through all the three bedrooms and the two bathrooms, and into the long, narrow walk-in closet over the garage.

One room was clearly Elias’s, equipped with a cheap component stereo and racks of unsorted tapes and records. A Pauli Girl beer poster adorned the closet door; a shelf over the bed held a dozen paperbacks by Stephen King and Robert Heinlein, and a larger volume entitled The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film, by Michael Weldon. The bed itself was unmade, and a line of cookie crumbs had collected along a crease in the bottom sheet. An old roll-top desk was awash in papers, notebooks, and junk, with a Batman comic book on top. Three pairs of jeans were on the floor.

Also on the floor was a blackened, stinking bundle that upon investigation was discovered to be the clothes the false Elias had been wearing when Smith, Sandy, and Khalil had cut it open and eaten its heart. The skin itself was gone.

Smith looked up from where he squatted over the clothes. “What happened to Mary’s skin?” he asked. “Sandy had it over at Annie’s house, that night – what happened to it?”

Khalil shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Sandy had it. Why does it matter?”

“Because that would be hard evidence to show the police that there’s something strange going on, at the very least.”

“Perhaps that is why the thing chose Sandy as its victim yesterday, then.”

Smith nodded. “I was thinking that,” he said.

“We have Sandy’s skin,” Khalil pointed out.

That was true. After cleaning up the couch they had left the skin in Annie’s basement, soaking in the laundry room sink to get off the rest of the slime.

“It’s kind of torn up, though,” Smith said.

Khalil shrugged. “Mary’s was torn up, too,” he said.

Smith nodded and stood up. “Come on,” he said.

They moved on.

Things were neater in the adjoining bathroom, save that the cap was off the toothpaste.

The second bedroom was the guest room. The bed was made, and covered with an old country quilt. A shelf of knicknacks hung between the two windows. Everything was exactly where it belonged. The shades were drawn, and a thin layer of dust covered everything.

The master bedroom was much larger, and somewhere between the artificial and dusty perfection of the guest room and the adolescent chaos of Elias’s room. The dresser was cluttered with cosmetics, including the biggest bottle of Vaseline Intensive Care lotion that Smith had ever seen. The bed was unmade, but the floor was clear and no crumbs could be seen.

It also smelled better than Elias’s.

It was just as deserted, though.

Only after they had checked the master bath and the oversized closet did Smith notice the note on the dresser mirror. A page from a yellow legal pad had been slipped into the crack between the mirror and its frame.

He leaned over and read it.

“You didn’t really think I was stupid enough to stay here after you got the other two, did you?” he read.

It was signed, “Joe Samaan 2nd.”

Smith ripped it from the mirror and was about to tear it up, when he realized there was more writing on the back. He turned it over.

“Ed Smith: You’ve really made my life difficult, you know. If you hadn’t been awake at three a.m., when you had no business being awake, I’d have gotten you that first night and it would all be over. Now I have to settle for skins I was never grown to fit, and they ITCH.”

This time there was no signature.

Smith took great satisfaction in tearing the paper into tiny bits and scattering them about the room.