The Nightmare People

7.

Annie McGowan sat in front of the TV, her feet tucked up on the couch beside her, knitting nervously and paying no attention to NBC’s special on gangs, cops, and drugs.

Somehow, awful as gangs and drugs were, they didn’t have the same immediacy they had had two weeks before.

She had been alone in the house for hours, ever since Smith and Khalil had left to observe the results of their handiwork, and she had been getting more and more nervous.

For over a week, she had been expecting her phony sister-in-law to drop by, and it hadn’t. She had been ready for it, and it hadn’t come. She had lived with that. Somehow, though, the full moon, and her incomplete knowledge of what was happening seven blocks away, seemed to make it worse. She almost expected to see faces at the windows, or hear strange howling outside, like a scene from one of those awful late-night horror movies on TV that she never meant to watch but sometimes did anyway.

The sirens that had sounded for so long, over on Barrett Road, had all died away now; she wasn’t sure what that meant. Was it just that all the emergency vehicles had reached the apartment complex, or had something gone wrong and kept more from coming?

She pulled too hard at the yarn, trying to loosen a tangle, and instead it knotted hard. She hissed in annoyance.

She was trying to pick the knot apart when the doorbell rang.

She looked up, startled.

Someone knocked, hard.

She dropped the knitting on the endtable, got slowly to her feet, and turned off the TV. Neither Smith nor Khalil would knock like that; Maggie wouldn’t knock at all. That dreadful imitation Kate ought to know better than to knock that way.

Lieutenant Buckley, perhaps?

Or someone else?

Or something else? “Who is it?” she called, as she made her way slowly toward the front door.

No one answered.

She hesitated at the door and called again, “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” someone said, in a familiar voice.

Ed Smith’s voice.

But he wouldn’t have knocked and rung like that. He had a key now, after all.

She threw a glance up the stairs at the bathroom door. It stood open a crack, the room beyond dark.

“Just a minute,” she called.

She hurried up the steps, almost running, pushed the door open and turned on the light, to have it ready. She didn’t want to fumble in the dark.

She didn’t have time to check everything, not without arousing suspicion, but a quick glance around spotted nothing wrong. She turned and headed back down.

“Come on, Annie, open the door,” Smith’s voice was calling.

She paused to catch her breath, then reached out and turned the knob.

Immediately, the door was pushed open, and she found herself facing not Ed Smith, but a big, fat man in a greasy T-shirt and old Levis.

He grinned at her.

She stepped back, startled.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Joe Samaan, at the moment,” he said, still in Ed Smith’s voice. “May I come in?”

She backed up onto the bottom step of the staircase. “Well, I…” she began.

“You don’t really have a choice,” the thing said, still grinning.

She stepped back, up another step.

The creature stepped in in a rush of warm, fetid air, and behind it came another man, another stranger, also grinning. She could see a third, a woman, out on the porch.

Simple nervousness turned to real fright. She hadn’t expected a whole group of them.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

The thing that called itself Joe Samaan wiggled a finger at her. “Can’t you guess, Annie?” it asked. “Tsk, tsk, I thought you’d figure it out right away.”

“Well, I didn’t, mister,” Annie snapped defiantly. “What do you and your friends think you’re doing?”

“What are we doing?” It grinned, and silvery teeth glittered. “Well, we’re planning a little welcome home party for your friends, Ed Smith and Khalil Saad, when they get here.” It stepped closer, and she backed farther up the stairs; she was halfway up and it was at the foot, now, and the other two had crowded into the foyer behind it.

The one pretending to be female closed the door, pushing gently until the latch clicked into place.

“I don’t think you should do that,” Annie said, trying desperately to figure out what to do about there being three of them, when she had only expected one. Being scared wasn’t going to do any good. The things were horrible, but they weren’t omnipotent; Smith and Khalil and that Lieutenant Buckley had been killing them easily enough once they knew how. The main advantages the creatures had lay in their unfamiliarity and their viciousness, and she knew enough of them to cut into that unfamiliarity.

Smith and the others could work up to a pretty good level of viciousness, too, and she thought she could manage that herself – but how could she counter being outnumbered three to one?

The thing gave her no clue. It just grinned.

She couldn’t think of anything.

All she could do was go through the motions, do what she could, and hope that Smith and Khalil got back in time to save her, and that they weren’t caught off-guard.

She wished she’d thought to fetch a knife from the kitchen before she opened the door, so at least she could go down fighting.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

She knew perfectly well they were going to kill her, if they could – not necessarily here and now, but sooner or later. They were evil; killing was what they did, their very essence. She was just stalling.

“Why, no, Annie,” it said, advancing. “Why would I want to kill you? I’m not going to hurt you at all.” She was retreating, and almost at the top. “In fact,” it said, “I’d like to give you a kiss.”

She was at the top; the leader was halfway up the stairs, the others waiting in the hall below, certain that they wouldn’t be needed to deal with one frightened old woman.

She turned and ran for the bathroom.

The thing bounded up the remaining steps and ran after her.

She made it through the door, but before she could turn and slam it, the thing was right there, forcing its way into the tiny room. Annie didn’t try to fight it; she just backed away again, pushing aside the shower curtain and stepping into the bathtub.

The thing pursued her, right up to the shower curtain, just as she expected.

She reached up, took the wires from the showerhead, and pulled hard.

The bottom of the shower curtain snapped out and slapped against the thing’s ankles, wrapping itself around its legs, as the loop of wire she had painstakingly sewn into the heavy plastic curtain and then threaded through a dozen pulleys and guides was yanked tight.

The nightmare person, caught completely unprepared, lost its balance and fell heavily forward; she scrambled out of its way as it tore the curtain down from the rings.

It roared incoherently as it sprawled in the tub.

Before it could recover she wound the wires around its neck and ankles, binding the curtain in place at both ends.

Here she paused, diverging slightly from her plan, to slam shut the bathroom door and bolt it from the inside.

Then she went back to her captive, and with the rest of the wire and rolls of adhesive tape and reinforced package tape she finished the job of securely binding it up in the plastic curtain.

Unfortunately, that was as far as her original scheme could take her; she hadn’t expected to be trapped in the bathroom with two more of the nightmare people waiting outside.

The thing had overcome its initial surprise and was beginning to struggle vigorously. She hoped her wrappings would hold.

She heaved the thing’s legs up and over the side, and left it lying in the tub, while she sat down on the toilet to decide what to do next.

The thing shouted, “Let me up! Get this thing off me!” The shower curtain did surprisingly little to muffle it.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hey, what’s going on in there?” an unfamiliar voice called.

Annie looked up. “I’ve got your friend,” she said. “He’s my prisoner.”

The one in the tub bellowed so loudly she was sure the others couldn’t hear her over that racket. The noise it made echoed off the tile and hurt her ears.

“Oh, shut up, you!” she shouted back at it. “Don’t you want to know what’s happening?”

It shut up, reluctantly.

“Now,” she said loudly, directing her comments at the closed door, “As I was saying, I’ve got your friend tied up, and I’ve got my husband’s old straight razor. You two both get the heck out of my house, right now, or I’ll… I’ll cut out this thing’s heart and eat it!”

She wished she actually did have that old razor, but it was long gone. She hadn’t seen it in thirty years or more. She wondered, even as she spoke, whether there was anything sharp in the bathroom, in case she had to carry out her threat.

She knew that Smith had killed at least one nightmare person with just his teeth and nails, but she didn’t think she had the strength or the stomach for that.

The two outside the bathroom were conferring quietly; she could hear their voices, but she couldn’t make out the words.

“If you’re thinking you can just break that door down and get me,” Annie called, “Remember, I already fooled this one. We were expecting you to try something like this; the whole house is booby-trapped. You can go now, or you can stumble around into one of the other traps, or you can wait until the others get here.”

She was sweating, she realized, sweating hard for the first time in years. It wasn’t from exertion; she hadn’t done anything all that frightful, just run up the stairs and tied up her captive – not that that was easy at her age!

It was fear, that was why she was sweating. She hoped that her terror wasn’t obvious in her voice when she told all these outrageous lies.

“She’s bluffing!” the one in the tub called. It started struggling harder, and one piece of tape came loose.

She kicked at the side of the tub. “Hush up, you!” she snapped.

The knob rattled, and then someone outside was leaning on the door; she could see it bending, giving slightly.

The bolt held. She bit her lower lip and looked around.

The only sharp object in the medicine cabinet was her little disposable plastic safety razor; that wouldn’t be any use. And there wasn’t anything sharp at all in the cabinet under the sink.

That left the vanity drawer, and that was where the old manicure set was.

The scissors and clippers weren’t any use, but the nail file might do. She pulled it out and looked at it.

Using a four-inch nail file to cut the heart out of a live, struggling monster didn’t seem possible. She put the file down on the edge of the sink.

Something thumped heavily against the door.

“Go away!” she said, panicky, “Or you’re next!”

“Joe,” something called, “What’s happening in there?”

“She tripped me up and tied me up in something!” the one in the tub bellowed.

“Shut up!” Annie shouted. She picked up the nail file, then put it down again. She crossed to the tub.

The thing was flopping like a fish, banging its feet against the bottom of the tub; on an upswing she caught hold of one.

Since the feet were bound tightly together at the ankles, wired together, catching one foot meant catching both.

The thing didn’t want its feet caught, and it took all her strength to hold them with one hand while she used the other to pry off its shoes – badly-worn tennis shoes.

“No reason I have to let you bang up my bathtub,” she muttered, more to herself than to her captive.

Another thump sounded as something rammed up against the bathroom door. Annie heard the bolt scraping against its collar, but it still held.

When she had one shoe off and the other loose, the thing thrashed about, and she lost her hold; the feet slammed into one side of the tub, and the other shoe fell free.

The creature wore white sweatsocks – but they weren’t sweaty at all, despite the heat outside.

Something rammed into the door again as she tried to recapture the swinging feet, and she heard wood crack.

“Darn it!” she said.

Then she had them, had both feet, and in a moment of bravery, or maybe just insanity, she yanked down one sock, bent over, and bit down hard on the creature’s right achilles tendon.

It screamed, an ear-splitting squeal that echoed from the tiled walls. Annie was almost glad that her hearing wasn’t as acute as it once had been.

The pair outside the door fell silent. The banging against the door stopped.

Annie looked at the bite, and saw that she had poked a small hole in the thing’s stolen skin. She bent over and bit again, worrying at the skin like a dog at a bone.

Her captive shrieked in agony.

She kept biting, and chewing, until she had removed most of the skin from one ankle – she spat the bits down the drain as she went, and ignored the thing’s wails.

Then she peeled off the sock and the skin from its right foot, peeled the skin away as if she were peeling an orange, and looked at the stringy grey flesh beneath.

There were no true toes, just curving black claws, shaped to hold the skin out in its original form. There was no bone in the heel, no true tendon at the back of the ankle, just stuff that was something like clay, something like rubber.

She retrieved the nail file from the sink and rammed it into the thing’s arch.

It shouted, “Let me out of here, bitch!” It sounded frightened, angry – but no longer in pain.

Biting had hurt it; stabbing had not. Just as Ed Smith had said. She nodded.

Then she got up and stood at the door, listening.

The hallway outside was completely silent.

Carefully, slowly, she drew the bolt and opened the door a crack and peered out.

The hallway was empty.

She stepped out, checked carefully both ways, and made her way, step by step, downstairs. The front door was open, and she saw no sign of the other two nightmare people.

She closed the door and hurried to the kitchen, where she fished a good, strong carving knife from the drawer by the stove.

Thus armed, she searched the whole house, top to bottom.

They were really gone.

Maybe her bluffing about booby-traps and razors had helped, but it had been the sound of their companion’s pain that had sent them fleeing. Cowards!

Well, she told herself, they were gone now.

Except, of course, for the one that had ruined her shower curtain, the one that lay squirming in the bathtub, shouting obscenities at her.

She had that one.

She had wanted a chance at one of them, had wanted her share of revenge. Providing a base for the men, cooking their meals and keeping watch by day, that was all very well, and undoubtedly helped the war effort, so to speak, but she had wanted a chance at one herself, all the same.

She had hoped for the one that had gotten Kate, but this one would do.

Knife in hand, she went back into the bathroom.

Chapter Twelve:

After the Fire