The Nightmare People

8.

Einar Lindqvist fired Smith on Thursday afternoon, but Smith didn’t worry about it. His job didn’t seem particularly important just now.

He had other concerns.

“George,” Smith said into the receiver, “I can’t explain it on the phone, but it’s really important. You’ve got to come out here this afternoon, right after work. I’ll give you the address…”

George came.

The first odd thing George encountered was that the old lady who answered the door wouldn’t let him in until he’d pricked his finger with a needle she gave him, and let her see the drop of blood that oozed out.

Then he was bundled into a car with Smith and another man, and driven over to the apartment house where Smith had lived, where they picked up a girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, saying they’d drive her to Patsy’s house. The girl seemed to know and trust Smith.

Picking her up that way seemed strange, and made George nervous, but it was not particularly terrible.

What came next was terrible. George watched in horror as his friend Ed Smith, who was now obviously insane, stuck a steak knife into the girl’s belly, while the stranger Ed called “Khalil” held her down.

His horror grew when he saw that she didn’t bleed. She didn’t scream, either, but smiled, showing silvery teeth that George tried to convince himself were just peculiar braces.

She started screaming a moment later, though, when Smith pulled a slimy black lump out of her chest and started to eat it, not merely raw but still living, still pulsing faintly and secreting something thin and clear and oily.

George fainted.

He came to in time to see the girl’s corpse dissolve slowly into putrid, oozing slime. The stench was unbelievable.

“The real Jessie Goodwin’s been dead for a week,” Smith told him. “This thing ate her, and crawled inside her skin and wore it like a disguise.”

The combination of the description and the smell was too much; George leaned out the car door and lost his lunch. As he wiped his mouth and looked at the ground he noticed that Smith hadn’t been able to keep the black thing down.

George knew he was going to have nightmares about this one, bad nightmares.

“We need help,” Smith told him. “There are just two of us doing this, now. We’ve got some… I guess you’d call them support people, some other people backing us up who don’t actually go out after the monsters. We started out with four of us, but they got the other two before we learned enough to protect ourselves, and we need more. Khalil and I can’t do it all ourselves. There are more than a hundred of them still in there, in those apartments, and next week, when the moon’s full, they’ll be able to breed, and there could be more of them, more than we could ever get.”

George didn’t say anything; he was still too sick.

“George,” Smith said, “Will you help us?”

George raised his head unhappily. “Help you do what?” he asked.

“Kill these things,” Smith replied.

“Like that?” he said, pointing at the dripping mess on the back seat.

Smith nodded.

George shook his head.

“I can’t do it, Ed,” he said.

They argued for a few minutes, but eventually Smith yielded.

“If you won’t do it, you won’t,” he said. “I can’t make you. If you change your mind, let me know. Or if you can find someone who will help, let me know.”

He drove back to Topaz Court, where George’s car waited.

George drove away slowly, and Smith and Khalil silently watched him go.

They’d had trouble contacting Lieutenant Buckley, who was, after all, a busy man. Smith had finally got hold of him, however, and arranged to meet him later that evening.

They didn’t plan to try a graphic demonstration with him, as they had with George, for fear that as a trained man of action he would stop them and give the monster a chance to escape or retaliate. They didn’t lay it all out, the story of spontaneous generation of evil, the extinction of the vampires, any of that. They didn’t mention that they had killed any of the creatures. They merely told him, as they drove along, that the things in the Bedford Mills apartments weren’t human. They described some of what they knew about the nightmare people.

Smith watched his face carefully, judging how much the cop believed.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t much.

“It’s not my problem,” Buckley told them.

“It’s over a hundred murders,” Smith replied.

“I don’t see any evidence,” Buckley answered.

“What if we brought you one of the skins they wear?” Smith suggested. “That would prove someone had been killed, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Buckley admitted, “But not by a monster.”

“A complete human skin in one piece, except for, say, a hole in the chest, wouldn’t prove something supernatural was happening? I mean, the fingers and toes all there, not cut open?”

“I don’t know,” Buckley said, eyeing Smith uneasily.

“We didn’t do it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Smith said. “We didn’t skin anybody. We got it away from one of the creatures.”

“How?”

“I’d rather not answer that yet. You tell me, first, what the police would do if I could show them that skin.”

Buckley blinked, then sat for a moment, thinking it over.

“Officially?” he asked.

Smith nodded.

“Officially, nothing,” Buckley replied. “It doesn’t fit. This isn’t something we’re set up to handle. I mean, think about it. What are we going to do, arrest these creatures of yours? Then what? Put them on trial for murder? They aren’t human. If we leave the skins on, we have no evidence of a crime; if we take them off, the thing’s not human, and we don’t put animals on trial. And could we hold onto them, anyway? Didn’t you say they can ooze out through windows? And how are we going to report any of this to higher up? What’ll we put in the papers? Nobody’s going to believe something like that unless they see it.”

“All right, then,” Smith said, “What about unofficially?”

“Unofficially, I think you’re both nuts, but if it were true, I think I could look the other way at some vigilante efforts, and maybe some of my officers might help out when they’re off-duty. But I’d need to see that skin.”

Smith nodded.

“It’s in the trunk,” he said. “It came from a friend of ours named Sandy Niklasen; they got him a couple of days ago, but we killed the one that got him.”

Smith saw Buckley tense slightly, and realized that the cop didn’t believe him.

“I’ll show you in a minute,” Smith said. He turned at the corner.

Buckley sat silently until they turned into the parking lot.

“I thought you said that all the people here were really monsters,” he said, as Smith slowed the car.

“They are,” Smith said, “But you don’t believe us. So I’m going to show you.” He stopped the car.

In the back seat, Khalil checked to be certain his windows were closed tightly.

“Here?” Buckley protested. “You’re going to show me that skin?”

“Not exactly,” Smith replied as he got out of the car.

“Khalil,” he said, “You get in front. And keep the motor running.”

Khalil nodded, and clambered into the driver’s seat while Lieutenant Buckley stepped out.

“What are you doing, Smith?” he asked.

“A little demonstration, Lieutenant,” he said. “Take a look around.”

Buckley looked.

It was nine o’clock on a pleasantly cool summer evening, but nobody was visible on any of the balconies or basement patios. The windows were all dark. The parking lot was virtually full.

That, Buckley knew, was not normal.

“Hey!” Smith shouted suddenly, “Who’s in there?”

No one replied; no lights came on. For an instant, though, Buckley thought he saw something flicker red in a nearby window.

“Come on,” Smith said, gesturing, “If they won’t come out, we’ll go in after them.”

“I don’t know, Smith,” Buckley said. “This is private property…”

“Hey, I live here, remember? That’s my apartment up there, C41.” He pointed. “I’ve got a perfect right to go in and say hello to my neighbors, don’t I?”

“Yeah,” Buckley admitted. Reluctantly, he climbed out of the car.

“One thing,” Smith said, “When it happens, turn and run. Remember, there are dozens of them in there. They aren’t significantly stronger than ordinary people, but there are a lot of them, and those teeth are dangerous.”

“When what happens?” Buckley asked, annoyed.

“You’ll know,” was Smith’s only reply.

They were halfway up the walk when he added, “And remember, they aren’t scared of guns. Don’t bother pulling your gun if they attack – just run.”

“What gun?” Buckley asked.

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Smith said, “I know you’ve got a gun. You’re a cop, aren’t you? And you’re out here dealing with someone who might be a dangerous loony, right?”

Buckley didn’t argue.

“And if they get you,” Smith added, “Bite.”

Smith turned aside from the entry and stepped down onto the patio of C14. Buckley followed, puzzled.

“Hey, Smith,” he began, as Smith rapped on the sliding glass door.

Smith held up a hand for silence.

“This apartment,” he said, “Was home to a pleasant little person named Irene Corbett, who I didn’t really know. I ran into her now and then when I picked up my mail or brought down my trash, that’s all. She’s dead now, and there’s something living here pretending to be her.” He rapped again, then tucked his hands into his pockets; the night air was unseasonably cool.

The patio light came on, disturbing a swarm of gnats.

“Look, Smith,” Buckley said, “We shouldn’t be here…”

Before he could say any more the door slid open.

A small, plump woman with curly black hair leaned out. “What is it? Oh, hi, Mr. Smith, Lieutenant; what’s up?”

Buckley started to speak, but before he could get a word out Smith’s hand came up from his pocket, the switchblade snapped open, and he slashed it across the woman’s face.

She blinked and stepped back, startled.

Buckley blinked, as well.

Smith was already turning away; he called, “Take a good look, Lieutenant.” Then he ducked out of the patio and onto the entryway path.

Buckley looked, and at first he thought that Smith’s knife had missed, that this was all just another manifestation of insanity.

Then he saw the skin slipping down the thing’s nose, revealing grey flesh beneath.

No blood.

No pain, from her reaction.

No human reaction at all. Just a slit across her face and the skin sliding down, the dull gray showing through.

He stood for a moment, staring.

“What’s wrong?” she said. She reached up and felt her nose.

“Oh, damn!” she said, when her fingers found the slash.

Buckley just stood, staring.

Then a car horn sounded, and he whirled. He remembered Smith’s warning, and he started running.

The thing jumped him from behind, grabbed him around the neck with both arms, around the waist with both legs. He stumbled, staggered, then ran on.

Something incredibly sharp, like a double row of hypodermic needles, scraped across his scalp. He looked up, but couldn’t see his attacker.

What he could see, though, was a ring of people, all kinds of people, men, women, and children, wearing everything from ordinary street clothes to nothing at all, standing silently on all sides and moving slowly inward, toward him – and toward the little red Chevy that stood in the parking lot, with its lights on, motor running, and horn blaring.

He ran for the car, ignoring everything else. It was rolling by the time he reached it; he dove inside, Smith reaching forward from the back to pull him in.

His attacker came with him. He tried to ram her head against the doorframe, to pry her off, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Here,” Smith shouted, “Get her inside, too – we can handle it, if it’s just one of them.”

He bent forward, dragging her in, and Smith reached up and wrapped his arms around her, trying to pry her loose. The door flapped as the car picked up speed, smashing painfully across the back of his right leg, and he fell forward, almost into Khalil’s lap.

Khalil paid no attention; he was concentrating on his driving.

There was a loud bump, and the car rose up for a moment, then slammed down again. Buckley tried not to think about what they had run over.

Then they were rounding the corner out of the parking lot and onto Barrett Road, and after that he couldn’t see much, as his own blood ran down into his eyes from half a hundred scalp wounds.

Buckley lost track of events for what seemed like several minutes. When he finally got himself straightened out and his vision cleared, he was sitting in the passenger seat, Khalil was driving at roughly twice the thirty miles per hour the law allowed on Barrett, and the passenger-side door was ajar but almost closed.

He opened the door and slammed it, then looked around.

In the back seat Smith was struggling with the false Irene Corbett. Her head was in his lap, face up and smeared with bright red blood, and his right arm was around her throat, while his left arm reached across, the point of the open switchblade pressed between her breasts.

“Hold still,” Smith hissed, “Or I’ll cut your heart out and eat it.”

She blinked up at him, horror suddenly plain on her face, and held still.

Smith relaxed slightly, but the knife didn’t move.

The hand that had been round her throat reached up and pulled at the loose skin on her nose.

It peeled away, like a rubber mask, revealing ridged flesh the color of wet modelling clay, a black-lipped mouth filled with gleaming needle-sharp teeth that looked more like stainless steel than bone. From the bridge of her nose – its nose – up, it still looked human; from there down, it was monstrous.

“Believe us now?” Smith asked.

Buckley swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I believe you.”

Smith smiled, and sank his knife gently into the thing’s chest.

Chapter Eleven:

Wednesday, August 16th