The Nightmare People

3.

“You know we didn’t get them all,” Buckley said angrily, “And we probably never will, now. That was a damn fool stunt, blowing up the place like that. Sure, it messed them up, and we got a lot of them in the confusion, and we probably mostly kept them from breeding this month, but now we don’t know where the hell they all are!” He glared at Smith.

“We didn’t know all of them anyway,” Smith pointed out, sitting stiffly so as not to aggravate any injuries. “They were already slipping away, one or two at a time.”

“I know,” Buckley said, “But now they’re all gone!”

“How many got away?” Smith asked.

Buckley shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Not counting larvae – and we have no idea how many of those are out there – my best count is that about forty, maybe forty-five are unaccounted for.”

“Less than a third of what they started with,” Smith pointed out.

“Yeah, but dammit, I still should run you in,” Buckley said. “That was the messiest piece of arson I’ve ever seen in my life!”

Smith shrugged, and grimaced as the movement pulled at a scab. “I’m an amateur,” he said. “What can I say?”

Buckley made a disgusted gesture and stopped talking.

“What are we going to do now?” Maddie Newell asked. She and her sister and Dr. Frauenthal had called up, wanting to talk to Smith about the nightmare people, and when, in the course of the discussion, they had learned about the meeting that Buckley had demanded they had invited themselves along.

“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Smith said, “But I think I’ve done my share. I’ve eaten God knows how many of those things – I’ve probably got an ulcer from them, and my digestion’s never going to be the same. I’ve been cut and burned and beaten, I’ve lost my job – I’ve had it. I’m leaving. I’m going to get out while I still have enough money for the fare, and I’m going somewhere a long way away from here – Boston or California or somewhere, where I can find work.”

Khalil shifted. “I am leaving, too,” he said. “This area is not good for me any more.”

George Brayton, seated on the far side of the room, nodded in agreement. Smith had called him that morning and asked him to come over and join the party. With Buckley and the Newells coming, it had seemed like a good idea to get as many of the people who knew about the monsters as possible.

“But there are still some of those things out there!” Alice Newell shouted.

Smith shrugged. “Not my problem,” he said. “Look around, will you?” He waved an arm to take in everyone in the crowded room. The Newell girls and Maggie Devanoy sat on the couch; Khalil and Lieutenant Buckley stood in either side of the archway to the dining room. Dr. Frauenthal leaned against one arm of the chair George sat in. Annie McGowan, as hostess, stood anxiously to one side, watching in case her guests needed anything. “You all know about them,” Smith said. “You all know how to kill them, what they can do – it’s not my problem any more.”

“Mr. Smith,” Dr. Frauenthal said, “After what I’ve heard, and having patched you back together the night before last, I can’t deny you’ve done your part, but how are we supposed to find them all and kill them? They could be anywhere by now. And we can’t tell anybody – they won’t believe us.”

“Show ’em the one in your bottle,” Smith suggested.

“I can’t,” Frauenthal said. “It died, once the moon was past full and it had no host, and it rotted away to nothing, same as the adults do. I tried to analyze the remains, but it’s just a mix of normal organic waste.”

“Can’t we tell the newspapers?” Maddie asked. “Couldn’t we go on TV, warn everybody about them? If people everywhere knew what they were and how to kill them, they wouldn’t last long.”

Buckley shook his head. “I thought of that a week ago,” he said. “I’ve talked to reporters, even staged a demonstration for one. Even if they believe me, they can’t get it into print or on the air. I’d need to convince not just the reporter, but his editor, and his editor, and even then, if they did publish it, nobody would believe it. And even if we found one somewhere – and right now we don’t know where any of them are, remember – even if we killed one live on TV, they’d all just call it a hoax. This is something people don’t believe just from hearing about it or reading it or seeing it on TV. You’ve got to see one of those things in person, get a look at them under their disguises, to believe it.”

That speech was greeted with several nods acknowledging its truth.

“All the papers refused?” Dr. Frauenthal asked. “You don’t think any of them would go for it?”

Buckley shrugged. “Maybe I could sell it to the tabloids, but nobody believes them anyway. It’d just be another ‘Space Aliens Stole My Lunch’ story. Something like this, it’s just not acceptable. People won’t believe it.”

“Nobody believed in vampires in 1939,” Maggie pointed out, “but somebody killed the last one anyway.”

“Sure,” George said, “Everybody knew how to kill them from all the stories. I mean, once you come up against a vampire, and you can’t disbelieve any more, it’s easy enough. You find its coffin and drive a stake through its heart; everyone knows that.”

“But nobody except us knows how to kill nightmare people,” Smith said, “and I don’t know what we can do about it, if we can’t get it all in the newspapers.”

“I never learned about vampires from the newspapers,” Maddie said. “What if you wrote stories about them, the way people wrote stories about vampires? Not news stories; books. Horror stories. What if you pretended it was all just fiction?”

“Yeah,” Alice said. “It wouldn’t matter if people believed it, as long as they knew what to do when they met one.”

“That might work, you know?” Buckley said, considering.

“But who’s going to write these stories?” Annie asked. “It won’t do any good to write them unless they get published somewhere.”

No one had a good answer to that at first. After a moment’s silence, Smith said, “I’m no writer. I’m a computer programmer. I don’t even write tech manuals.”

George said, hesitantly, “I used to play poker with a writer, a guy named Lawrence Watt-Evans. He lives over in Gaithersburg.”

“What kind of a writer?” Buckley asked. “I mean, is this a guy who writes articles for Popular Mechanics? That’s not what we’re looking for, if he is.”

“No,” George said, “He writes novels. Science fiction, mostly. Makes his living at it.”

Smith shrugged. “Hey, if he agrees, we’ll tell him everything that’s happened, and maybe he can write it all up as a novel.”

George nodded. “I’ll give him a call,” he said, “And see if he agrees.”