Gleaming black fingernails, inches long, thrust out through the tips of the fingers, shredding Sandy’s skin and digging into Smith’s back as Smith dove down into the thing’s chest.

Smith worked the knife with both hands, ignoring the pain in his back, ignoring the stink that rose up around him, ignoring the squirming, sawing it through the stubborn gray flesh until he found what he was looking for, the black slug-shaped heart.

He cut around it and pulled it free, and the thing gasped.

He put it to his mouth and set his teeth on it.

The thing let out a low, keening wail. Its claws stopped digging into him.

“Wait, Smith,” it said, “Wait, please, I’ll do anything.”

Smith looked at its face.

Smith looked at Sandy’s stolen face.

It still looked exactly like Sandy, and its features were twisted in an expression of abject terror — an expression that Smith was sure the real Sandy never wore in his life. Its eyes, still falsely brown, were pleading.

The heart he held was pulsing faintly, and a thin, clear slime was oozing from it, making it slippery and hard to hold. He set his teeth in more firmly.

“Please, Smith!” it said.

He opened his mouth, still holding the heart in both hands. He looked down at the thing’s chest.

The opening had healed over, but a concavity revealed the heart’s absence. Sandy’s shirt and the skin of Sandy’s chest were ripped back, torn open like the foil and skin on a baked potato.

“You killed Sandy,” Smith said.

The thing nodded.

“And Bill Goodwin?” Smith asked.

It nodded again.

“And Elias’s mother?”

Another nod.

“And if I let you go, you’ll kill someone else, won’t you?”

“No!” it said, pleading, “No, I swear, I won’t! I’ll stay inside, I’ll let the others take care of me, please!”

“You were the one we burned?” Smith asked.

It nodded again. Its fingers twitched, as if it wanted to grab its heart but didn’t dare.

“There are a hundred and forty-three of you? That’s all? Or are there others, in other towns?”

“Just us. A hundred and forty-three. That’s all so far.”

“So far?”

It nodded.

“You mean there might be more someday?” Smith asked. “More are going to just appear?” It shook its head. “No, there’s only one first appearance, but we’ll breed, of course.”

“You will?”

It nodded.

“How? Like people? Like vampires?”

It shook its head. “Neither,” it said. “We have our own way.” The depression in its chest seemed to be growing, deepening.

“Give it back!” it wailed, looking down at itself.

Smith lifted the heart higher, further from the thing’s body. “How do you breed?” he asked.

“Give it back!”

“How do you breed?”

“Larvae,” it said, “Larvae that grow inside your people. Give it back!”

“Larvae?” Smith looked from the creature’s face to the black object he held. He had thought of it as the thing’s heart, but now he reconsidered. “Like this?”

The nightmare creature nodded. “Sort of like that,” it said, “It splits, and half of it stays with the parent, and the other half goes down someone’s throat and then eats its way out to the skin as it grows.” Smith looked at what he held with sudden revulsion, and almost dropped it. Khalil’s face twisted with disgust, and they could hear Annie retch.

“You mean if I swallowed this, it could eat me?”

“No,” the thing said, “Not ... I mean, yeah, it could, you’d better give it back...” Khalil jerked the thing’s head back.

“You’re a lousy liar,” Smith said. He lifted the black lump to his mouth.

“No, no, don’t!” the creature begged. “It ... I’ll tell you!”

“Talk,” Smith said.

“At the full moon,” it said. “And the larvae has to be intact. It’s vulnerable, it’s not like an adult. But every full moon, we can spawn, and it takes two weeks, until the new moon, for the new person to grow into its skin.”

Smith lowered the thing again. “You mean that in a few weeks, there will be more of you?” It nodded. “Yes,” it said.

“How many?” Smith asked.

“We can all reproduce each month, if we ... if we’ve eaten someone, and of course all of us, we each got someone when we first appeared, all but the one who was supposed to get you, and he got someone later...”

“Who?” Smith interrupted. “Who’d he get?”

“Joe Samaan — Elias’s father.”

Smith and Khalil glanced at each other.

“So that’s why he stopped bothering me,” Smith muttered. Then he looked back at the nightmare person.

“Go on,” he said, “You were going to tell me how many of you there will be.”

“Well, we can all reproduce, so we’ll double — from one forty-three to two eighty-six.” Smith shook his head.

“No,” he said, “Not two eighty-six.” He lifted the black mass, trying to ignore the increasing flow of slime. “Two eighty-four, at most.”

He took a bite.

The thing screamed.

Smith had trouble choking the stuff down, but he eventually managed it all, despite the slime and the stink.

The screaming lasted for twenty minutes.

Chapter Ten:

Wednesday, August 9th;

Thursday, August 10th

1.

“The sixteenth,” Smith said, looking at the calendar. “It’ll be full on the sixteenth.”

“Today is the ninth, yes?” Khalil asked.

“Yes.”

“Then we have one week.”

Smith nodded.

Khalil shook his head. “In one week, we cannot kill a hundred and forty-two. Our stomachs would not take it.”

Smith managed a sickly grin. He was sitting up in bed after a long night of nausea. “You’re telling me,” he said.

“We do not even know where all of them are,” Khalil pointed out. “I do not believe that they have all remained in the apartments.”

“I know,” Smith agreed. “At the very least, there’s the one that wanted me, that got Elias’s father. I don’t know if it’s still in the same skin, or if it moved on into someone else.” Khalil nodded.

Annie stuck her head in the bedroom door. “How are you feeling, Mr. Smith?” she asked.

“Much better, Ms. McGowan, thanks.”

“Oh, call me Annie,” she said. “After all, if you’re going to be staying here...” She didn’t finish the sentence.

“And you can call me Ed, if you like,” Smith said.

She shook her head. “I’ll try,” she said, “but you don’t look like an Ed.” She stepped into the room and looked around.

“All these computers!” she marvelled.

“It’s just two computers, really,” Smith explained. “It’s just that the Deskpro isn’t assembled yet.”

“Oh,” she said, staring at the clutter he and Khalil had strewn throughout her spotless guest room.

Khalil had done most of the work; Smith had been too sick. They had gotten everything from his car and motel room and brought it all to Annie McGowan’s guest room.

Smith had paid the bill at the Red Roof Inn, and had not been at all happy to see the total he put on his MasterCard.

They had made no attempt to collect anything from his old apartment. From Khalil’s apartment they had retrieved only two changes of clothing, some toiletries, and two switchblades. Khalil kept one; Smith borrowed the other.

“What about the couch?” Smith asked, hoping to distract Annie from her unwanted new housemates.

She frowned, and Smith realized he was only making it worse.

“That stuff doesn’t seem to come out,” she said, “And of course there are all the tears in the cushions...”

“Ruined, huh?” Smith asked sympathetically. “Don’t worry, Annie, we’ll buy you a new one. Really. I’m really sorry about it all.”

“Oh, it’s not your fault,” she said, waving the matter away.

“I know,” Smith said, “but we’ll buy you a new one, I promise. Hey, what time is it?” Khalil glanced at his watch. “9:40,” he said.

“Annie,” Smith said, “May I use your phone? I’ve got to call my boss, tell him I won’t be in today.”

“Of course,” she said.

2.

Einar was not pleased.

“Look, Ed,” he said into the phone, “You’ve missed a week already, and you didn’t call yesterday, and when I called your motel you weren’t there, and you weren’t at your apartment, either. And when you were in on Monday I think you did more damage than good. Just what’s going on? Where are you now?”

“I’m staying with friends,” Smith said. “I was sick enough that I didn’t think I should be alone. The name is McGowan, and the number is 948-8332.”

“Uh-huh,” Einar said. “Have you seen a doctor?”

“No.”

For a moment neither of them spoke; then Einar said, “Look, Ed, I don’t want to pry, but are you sure there’s nothing else? Something you aren’t telling me?”

“I’m sure,” Smith said.

Again, neither spoke. Finally Einar sighed. “Listen, Ed,” he said, “You’re a good programmer, when you’re on the job, but this isn’t college or something, and you’re not a freelancer. You’re supposed to be here during working hours, working. If you’re not back on the job tomorrow, I want to hear that you’re sick from a doctor, not just from you, and I want you to be somewhere I can get hold of you.”

“Sure, Einar, I understand. Did you get the number here?”

“No. Give it to me again.”

Smith gave it to him again.

“All right, I’ve got it,” Einar said. “Do you think you might come in this afternoon? Will you be in tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, Einar. Really, I just don’t know. I’ve been throwing up all night, and I’m not sure I’m over it.”

“Uh-huh. All right, Ed, but remember, I warned you.”

He hung up.

Smith grimaced, and hung up as well.

“I think I’m about to lose my job,” he told Khalil.

“Seriously?” Khalil asked.

Smith shrugged. “I don’t know. Hey, don’t worry about it; it wasn’t that great a job to begin with. I’ve got some money, I’ll be okay for a couple of months if I’m careful. Besides, if we don’t kill those things off, I think I’m going to want to get the heck out of this part of the country.” Khalil nodded agreement.

“If they double their numbers every month, however,” he pointed out, “Soon no place will be safe.” Smith shrugged. “That’s if. And if that happens, my job isn’t going to matter a whole hell of a lot, is it?”

“No,” Khalil admitted. “I am sure they will try to kill us.” Smith blinked. “Do you think that’s what the fake Sandy was supposed to do?”

“He said so, didn’t he? That he was to send us out alone, where the others could get us?” Smith nodded.

They sat silently for a moment.

Annie was in the living room, fussing with the ruined couch again. They could hear her bustling about.

“Maybe we should have asked that thing more questions before we killed it,” Smith said. “Like where they’ll be going next, after Diamond Park.”

Khalil shrugged. “You did not think of it.”

Smith nodded agreement. “There’s a lot I didn’t think of,” he said.

3.

“If we can’t kill them all,” Smith said, “Is there some way we can stop them from breeding?” Nobody answered. Khalil shrugged, and Annie just looked down at her knitting, her fingers working busily.

“What if we just cut their hearts out, but didn’t eat them?” Smith suggested.

Annie dropped a stitch and frowned. Khalil tapped his fingers quietly.

“And how exactly do they breed? That one we questioned said that the larva goes down someone’s throat — how does it get there?”

“Perhaps a bite, the way it happens when one takes a new skin, but it sends only the larva down, instead of eating its own way in,” Khalil suggested.

Smith nodded. “It’s probably something like that,” he agreed. “But if that’s how it works, I don’t see how they can do it. People aren’t going to just let it happen, let strangers walk up and stick their heads in their mouths.”

“Wouldn’t be strangers,” Annie said, looping yarn around the needle. “All those folks over there have friends and family, don’t they?”

“I guess so, but I still don’t see...” Smith began.

“And,” Annie said, “It’s not too much to ask for a little kiss now and then, is it?”

“A kiss?” Khalil’s fingers stopped tapping the table. Smith blinked and looked over at Annie.

“That would do it, wouldn’t it?” Smith said. “At least, it would let ’em get their mouths up against the mouths of their victims.”

Annie nodded, not looking up from her work.

“I expect the one that’s pretending to be Katie may turn up and try to convince me it’s all a misunderstanding, and we should kiss and make up,” she said. “Won’t do it, though, not unless it forces me.”

Khalil and Smith stared at each other.

“I wonder,” Smith said. “Once the larva’s in there, do you think there’s any way to stop it?”

“The doctors have things that pump out stomachs, yes?”

Smith nodded. “Yeah, a stomach pump might work,” he said, “I don’t know. These aren’t normal parasites, after all; they’re supernatural.”

“There are none anywhere yet,” Khalil pointed out. “Should we not try to stop any from getting anywhere?”

“Yes,” Smith agreed, “We should. And I know which one, too — the one that got Sandy said that the one that got Elias’s father was the one that had originally been after me. I think it’s time we finished off that whole fake family over there.”

Khalil nodded.

“Will the two of us be enough, do you think?” he asked.

“We’re all we’ve got,” Smith said. “We’d better be. We’ll be catching it off-guard, I hope, and during the daylight, and there will be two of us to the one of it — we managed okay with the fake Sandy.” Khalil nodded again. “We go now, then?”

“Yes,” Smith said, “We go now.” He stood up.

Khalil rose as well.

“Oh, one thing,” Smith said, pausing. “This time, Khalil, you eat it.” 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.

5.

Exhaustion conquered frustration, and Smith slept from noon until shortly after six.

Khalil was still asleep when Smith came downstairs, and Smith didn’t disturb him.

Annie was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper and sipping tea.

“Hello,” she said. “I’d say good morning, but it’s almost time for supper.” Smith nodded. “Yeah, hello,” he said. He sat down heavily on the nearest chair.

Annie sipped her tea.

After a moment of silence, Smith burst out, “There must be some way to get them all!” Annie looked up from the paper. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It took three hundred years to kill all the vampires, if I heard that one here correctly; why do you think you can get all the nightmare people in a week?”

“Because it’s still early,” he said, “They aren’t really established yet. And they aren’t vampires, anyway

— they’re worse. If they can really double their numbers every month, they can take over the world in, I don’t know, a couple of years, probably. Say a hundred this month, two hundred the next, four hundred, eight, sixteen, thirty-two by January — three thousand two hundred, that’s half of Diamond Park. Six thousand in February, twelve thousand in March, a hundred thousand by next June, a million and a half by October of next year, six million by 1991 — Christ, we’re doomed if we don’t get them all now.”

“But they won’t really spread that fast,” Annie said. “After all, lots of things can breed at that rate — but they don’t. There are always limits, things that hold them back.”

“But these things ... oh, I don’t know.”

“You don’t really need to kill them all right away,” she said, “Just stop them from breeding.”

“Yeah, we thought of that,” Smith agreed, “But how?”

“Well, if they breed by kissing, and only at the full moon, just keep them from kissing anybody then.”

“Fine, but how?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Annie said, flustered. “How do they get near enough to kiss anybody in the first place?”

“They just walk up, in disguise,” Smith said with disgust. “They’ll get all the friends and family of their original victims, I suppose — or maybe they’ll slip into bedrooms while people are asleep, the same as they did originally.”

Annie sipped tea again. “What if they didn’t have disguises, then? Or if nobody was asleep?”

“Sure, what if, but...” Smith’s voice trailed off, and his expression turned thoughtful.

“You know,” he said a moment later, “You might have something there.”

“Oh?”

“I think so, yes.” Smith was smiling thoughtfully.

“Would you care to explain that?” Annie asked sharply.

“Actually, Annie, no, I’d rather not,” Smith replied. “I need to think about it some more.” She stared at him for a minute, then shrugged. “Have it your own way, Mr. Smith,” she said. She picked up the newspaper again.

“It’ll be easier if there aren’t as many of them by then, of course,” he said.

“Of course,” Annie said, without looking up. She drank down the rest of her tea.

“I’m not about to walk back into the apartment, though, where I’d be outnumbered a hundred to one.”

“Of course not.”

“I’ll need to get them alone, one by one.”

Khalil, still looking sleepy, entered at that point. He exchanged greetings with them both.

“Annie,” Smith asked, “May I use the phone?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Khalil, can you be ready to leave in ten minutes?” Smith asked. “I want to use what’s left of the daylight.”

Khalil nodded.

“Thanks,” Smith said. “Where’s the phone book?”

6.

“Hi, Walt? This is Jim. You remember, from work. Look, I’m having some trouble, and I need to talk to somebody. Could you meet me at that little bar on Townsend Road in about, oh, twenty minutes?” The voice on the phone was puzzled. “I don’t know, uh, Jim; what’s up?”

“I don’t want to talk about it on the phone, Walt. Could you please come? I’ll be at the bar.”

“Oh, what the hell, sure, I guess. Twenty minutes? The bar on Townsend Road?”

“Yeah, you know the one, Carlie’s Nightside I think it’s called.”

“Okay. I’ll be there.”

Smith hung up and smiled at Annie and Khalil.

The thing pretending to be Walt Harris arrived right on time, but Smith and Khalil were not waiting at the bar. They were waiting in the parking lot behind the bar, which Smith had chosen because the lot backed up to a grove of trees and was not visible from the street or any neighboring buildings.

The only problem was muffling the screams; they used Khalil’s shirt for that, and Smith got a finger jabbed by one of the needle-sharp teeth while stuffing it in.

Khalil gagged repeatedly on the foul black lump, but gamely choked it all down. It didn’t stay down, of course, but once the thing had stopped moving and started to dissolve, they didn’t much care. Smith stood guard while Khalil heaved it all back up onto the grass beside the parking lot.

When he was done he looked at Smith. “You ate two of those?” he said.

Smith nodded. “And I’m going to eat another, just as soon as we can catch one. Then it’ll be your turn again.” He grimaced. “Who knows, maybe we’ll get used to it.” They both thought of retrieving the skin, but looking at the stinking mess that lay beneath the trees, neither one could bring himself to touch it. Nor could they afford to wait around for the remains to finish dissolving. Someone, either human or nightmare person, might happen along at any time.

“We’ll get one another time,” Smith said, leading the way to his car.

“Who is Jim, that he thought he was meeting?” Khalil asked, as they headed back toward Topaz Court.

“Nobody,” Smith said, his eyes on the road. “I made him up.” Startled, Khalil asked, “But how...”

“Their memories aren’t complete,” Smith explained. “It didn’t know whether the real Walt Harris knew someone named Jim who would want to meet him like that.”

“Ah,” Khalil said, nodding.

A moment later he added, “But that will not work with all of them, surely.”

“Surely,” Smith agreed, “But it’s a start.”

Khalil nodded again.

7.

The next ruse was a call from a veterinarian, to come and pick up a cat’s medicine. The false Attalla Sleiman knew that it had a cat in its care, and could not be sure that it was healthy; Smith’s mother had been through a bout of F.U.S. with her cat, years before, so Smith was able to fake the call quite convincingly, and to plead with the creature to come and get the diuretics and antibiotics quickly, because the cat would die without them. Wednesday, he said, was the only day they had evening hours at the clinic.

Sleiman’s replacement believed it; he came to the animal hospital on Longdraft Road, over in Gaithersburg, and Smith and Khalil dragged him behind the unused shed out back.

This time Smith had a Nerf ball for a gag, and used a stick to wedge it in.

It was full dark by then, and the nightmare people were stronger in the dark, so the struggle lasted for some time, but in the end numbers and the initial surprise were enough.

After that, the two of them were too battered and worn to tackle any more. They returned to Annie’s house, where they washed and rested.

They stood guard that night, while Annie slept; they made plans over the kitchen table, listing every resident of the Bedford Mills Apartments that Smith knew by name, writing down every deception they could think of that might draw nightmare people out alone.

“If they start travelling in pairs, we’re in trouble,” Smith remarked.

Khalil just nodded.

“Unless we recruit some more help, anyway,” Smith added a moment later.

Khalil looked up.

“When we started,” Khalil said, “There were four of us, even without Annie and Maggie. Now we are two.”

Smith nodded. “I know,” he said, “And I feel guilty about Elias and Sandy, too. All the same, we can’t do it all ourselves, not when there are a hundred and forty of them left, and they probably all know who we are.”

Reluctantly, Khalil nodded.

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

1.

In the days that followed Smith’s little demonstration Lieutenant Buckley and some of his men provided unofficial help in reducing the number of nightmare people in the vicinity, as he had promised they would.

Officially, nothing was out of the ordinary at the Bedford Mills Apartments, nor elsewhere in Diamond Park, or any other part of Montgomery County. No bulletins were issued regarding Bedford Mills or its inhabitants, and no arrests or incidents were reported. Nothing more appeared in the newspapers about the disappearance or its aftermath.

Unofficially, however, the nightmare people were being systematically hunted and destroyed. Half a dozen of the few who still bothered to show up for work at their victims’ jobs received unexpected calls from the police while at their places of business, calls informing them of various emergencies, and when they left to attend to matters they were never seen again. A dozen or so who stayed “home” were phoned there and summoned for questioning, and likewise never seen again.

The brief spell of cool weather gave way to normal August heat, muggy and uncomfortable, but that made no difference to either the hunters or the hunted. None of them paid much attention to the weather, or the news from Lebanon, or the upcoming twentieth anniversary of Woodstock. The silent struggle for survival took precedence.

During that period, several Montgomery County police officers reported in sick with stomach problems

— cramps, nausea, and so forth. Officers who had not been included in the secret campaign wondered about food poisoning, and memos were circulated, but nothing came of it. No official cause was ever found, and in the end the whole matter was dismissed as an outbreak of an unknown and not particularly serious virus.

By Sunday the thirteenth the nightmare people had no doubt at all of what was happening, but there was little they could do about it. Appealing to higher authorities, hiring lawyers, all the lines of recourse that humans would have were too risky, too likely to expose what was really going on.

Besides, it was already too late to help the ones who had been destroyed.

Phones at Bedford Mills began to go unanswered, however. Traffic in and out of the apartment complex dwindled away to nothing. Police cruisers prowled the parking lot regularly, and went unmolested, but the officers involved generally stayed in their cars, making no attempt to enter any of the four buildings.

After all, in there they would be outnumbered. A raid in force would be noticed, would draw questions that couldn’t be answered very well.

A few small expeditions into now-empty apartments were staged, but without significant results. And there were still ways of luring an incautious creature to its doom.

The menace was contained, but not destroyed.

Meanwhile, at 706 Topaz Court, life settled into a routine. Smith and Khalil slept from early morning until mid-afternoon, while Annie and sometimes Maggie stood guard, ready to scream if anyone got into the house. In the evenings, Smith and Khalil joined Buckley and his men in trapping and killing nightmare people, and searching through the homes of destroyed creatures in hopes of learning more about them.

At night, while Annie slept, the two of them rested, planned, and stood guard over Annie and each other.

No one was permitted to enter the house without showing a drop or two of flowing blood; Annie’s sewing basket and a bottle of S.T. 37 antiseptic had been moved to an endtable in the living room so as to provide a supply of sterile needles for that purpose. The three full-time inhabitants all had wounds on their fingers that had been opened and re-opened repeatedly.

Khalil had enough vacation time and sick leave accumulated that his job as a garage mechanic was safe until the 21st, and Smith’s job was already lost. They were both able to devote themselves entirely to the fight.

Even so, by Wednesday, August sixteenth, the night of the full moon, Smith knew there were still a hundred and four nightmare people out there.

What was worse, some of them were unaccounted for. Buckley’s men reported only ninety-three still in the Bedford Mills complex. The other eleven were lost.

“Probably scattered across half the country,” Smith said, during a conversation at the breakfast table. It was late afternoon, and he had just gotten up.

“And there’s nothing we can do about them,” Smith continued.

Khalil and Buckley didn’t argue.

“And there’ll probably be twenty-two of them, rather than eleven, two weeks from now,” Buckley added.

“At least,” Smith agreed.

“Do you really think we can stop the others, here, from breeding tonight?” Khalil asked.

Smith shrugged.

“We can try,” he said.

2.

“Just what is it you’re planning, anyway?” Buckley asked from the door of his cruiser as he prepared to depart. The sun was down, the sky grey and darkening; somewhere in the east the moon was rising, but hidden by the haze.

“A distraction,” Smith said. “Something to keep everybody busy.” Buckley wiped sweat from his forehead, and glared at Smith. “That’s no answer,” he snapped.

Smith ignored that and remarked casually, “There’s a lunar eclipse tonight, did you know that? It should start in just a few minutes. First one in seven years that can be seen around here — except I don’t think we’ll be able to see it. All the same, I figure the eclipse might have something to do with how those things breed. Even if it doesn’t, if I understand how lunar eclipses work, that’s got to be when the moon is fullest. And since it’s just now getting dark, I figure this has got to be when they’ll be able to breed, so that’s when I set my distraction for.”

“What kind of a distraction?” Buckley demanded.

“Believe me,” Smith said, “It’s better if you don’t know. You’re still a cop, after all.”

“Yeah, I am,” Buckley said, “And I don’t like the sound of that. Maybe I’d better go along with you two, make sure things don’t get out of hand.”

Smith smiled, and leaned on the roof of the patrol car. “I thought you might feel like that,” he said.

“That’s why I set the main charge up to be completely automatic. I put it together last night and set it up this morning, right before I came back here to sleep. It’ll go off in about five minutes, whether I’m there or not — I rigged a second-hand computer and printer. See, I put sandpaper in the printer and taped matches and a fuse to the print-head, and then programmed the computer to run a full printer test at 8:23

tonight — that’s when the guy on the news said that the eclipse starts. It’s kind of an expensive way to rig a timer, but I’m not that good with mechanical stuff — I figured I should use what I...” He didn’t finish the sentence; the blast was clearly audible despite the intervening seven-block distance.

In fact, it was very loud indeed, loud enough to rattle windows and echo from the surrounding houses.

Buckley’s head whipped around, and he stared in the direction of the explosion. “Son of a bitch!” he said. “You fucking maniac, what if there were innocent people around? Where was it?” He looked for some sign of what had happened, and wasn’t sure if he could make out a waver in the air that might be heat or smoke — or might just be more of the thick summer haze in the air.

“Apartment C14,” Smith replied calmly. “About a hundred gallons of gasoline, a hundred pounds of flour scattered around or balanced on the printer, some cotton waste, and all the other combustibles I could find. And there’s gas in some of the other basements, too. Took me all night to set it up.”

“Shit!” Buckley slid into the car and slammed the door; Smith removed his elbow from the car’s roof.

As he watched Buckley drive away, Smith asked Khalil, “Shall we go watch?” In the east, hidden by the haze, the moon was full and round.

3.

It was a very satisfactory blaze as far as it went, Smith thought. The blast had blown out solid concrete walls. Most of C Building had caved in, as he had hoped, and any nightmare people who had been in there were not going to be out roaming around tonight as if nothing had happened.

He supposed that they could slip out easily enough, but not with their disguises intact. By the time they tracked down new victims for their skins, would they have time to find new ones for their larvae, as well?

He frowned. Or might they plant the larvae first?

Not if anyone saw them coming, of course, and without their disguises that meant they could only attack sleeping victims.

And who, around here, would be asleep, with all this going on?

How far could they get, without intact skins, with cops and firemen and onlookers on all sides?

And the fire had spread quickly; D Building was ablaze from roof to basement.

Unfortunately, A and B buildings hadn’t caught. He had stashed open cans of gasoline around empty apartments in both of them, the apartments that had been occupied by the nightmare people he and his comrades had destroyed; he had hoped that a spark would carry, but he hadn’t managed to rig anything more definite.

Blinking against the heat and glare he crept across the parking lot, unnoticed by anything human — all eyes seemed to be on the burning buildings.

But of course, there were eyes present that weren’t human at all.

He tried to move casually, and stepped down onto the little patio of apartment B11 as if he were just trying to get a better view.

He had the crowbar under his shirt, Sandy Niklasen’s cigarette lighter in one pocket of his shorts, Khalil’s switchblade in another. He didn’t expect to need the crowbar or the knife; this apartment, occupied until three days before, was one he had broken into that morning and hidden gasoline in.

He reached the door and tugged at it.

It didn’t move.

Startled, he pulled harder.

It still didn’t move.

He looked in through the glass and saw that someone had wedged it shut with a piece of one-by-two.

“Shit,” he muttered. He pulled up his shirt and pulled the crowbar up out of the waistband of his shorts.

Then he glanced around, to see if anyone was watching.

Someone was. A familiar face was hanging down over the edge of the balcony overhead.

“Howdy, Mr. Smith,” said the thing that had replaced Nora Hagarty.

He froze, and stood staring at it.

He didn’t have his carving knife. The switchblade was in his back pocket, on the right, and his right hand held the crowbar.

Besides, the chances were that the thing wasn’t alone.

He remembered that Nora Hagarty’s apartment was B22, but the one directly above him now would be B21 — that meant the creature was visiting.

It wouldn’t be alone.

And this was the night of the full moon. If the thing reached him now, and got its larva down his throat, it would take him two weeks to die.

What he had seen happen to Elias was hideous, but at least it was fairly quick; if this one got him now, on this one particular night, the same thing would happen in slow motion.

Two weeks, it would take.

Two weeks.

Another figure, man-shaped, leaned around the corner of the entryway; he couldn’t see its face, just a black outline against the roaring inferno that had been C Building, but when it smiled, a stray reflection from the glass door behind him showed him shining needle teeth gleaming orange in the firelight. And the thing that had Nora Hagarty’s face was doing something the real Nora Hagarty would never have attempted, swinging itself down over the balcony railing, ape-like, preparing to drop down to the patio below.

He turned back to the door and swung the crowbar with all his strength.

The glass snapped, and a spiderweb of cracks appeared, but it didn’t shatter.

“Fucking safety glass,” he muttered, and swung again.

A soft plop behind him told him that the Hagarty thing was down. He didn’t look back.

The glass shattered this time; he kicked his way through and into B11.

Red eyes gleamed at him from the hallway, and a smile reflected firelight from silver teeth.

“Oh, shit.” He ran for the doorway of the apartment; even as he did, it opened, and another figure stood there.

The gasoline. Where had he put the gas in this one?

In the bedroom; he had poured half a can on the bed, then closed the door, hoping that it wouldn’t all evaporate away. The other half-gallon he had stood in the closet with the cap loose.

In the bedroom — at the other end of the hallway.

There were two of them behind him, coming in through the shattered glass door, and one standing in the hallway smirking, and another in the door to the stairwell, and that just left the kitchen.

He ran for it, and made it — but so what?

The kitchen was just a walk-through, with counter and cabinets on one side and appliances on the other, and open at each end — one to the dining area, one to the hallway. And at the hallway end the nightmare creature was already waiting, smiling at him.

He snatched at the cabinets, pulling them open, and found what he wanted — a quart bottle of cooking oil. He pulled it out, opened it, and poured half of it on the floor.

The creature’s smile vanished, to be replaced by puzzlement.

Smith pulled out Sandy’s lighter, knelt, and flicked the wheel, then touched the flame to the pool of oil.

It took longer to catch than he had expected, but when it did it flared up quite satisfactorily; he lost most of the hair off one forearm, and tumbled over backwards, away from the flames.

The nightmare people, two at each end of the kitchen, frowned at him.

“What do you think you’re doing?” one of them asked.

“Trying to get a fire going,” Smith told it. “If I’m going to die, I don’t want to leave enough skin on the four of you to do you any good.”

Only when he said that did he realize that that really was his plan, that he didn’t know of any way he might survive.

He realized he was sprawled on the floor next to the burning oil, and he got to his feet.

The front of one of the floor cabinets seemed to be catching; he splashed more oil at it. Then he pulled down a canister and spilled flour onto the flames.

It roared up, and he backed away, almost into the hands of the two at the near end.

“Get some wet towels from the bathroom!” one of them called.

One of the two in the hallway vanished, presumably to fetch towels.

Inspired, Smith yanked out the end of the roll of paper towels from the wall beside the sink, feeding it into the flames; the fire raced up the streamer, leaving fluttering black cinders drifting in the air en route, and settled onto the roll itself.

Smith’s eyes stung, and he was beginning to have trouble breathing. He pulled open a drawer, looking for more flammables.

He found knives.

He pulled out a big carving knife and smiled at it.

“Maybe,” he said, “I can take one of you with me.” He spun, and flung himself at the two in the dining area.

They were concentrating on the fire more than on him, and the sudden attack caught them off-guard; one fell back, while the other staggered.

Smith landed atop the fallen one, and drove the knife into it.

“At least,” he said, as he dragged the blade through resisting fabric and flesh, “I’ll ruin that skin for you.” The other one was pulling at him, and he pulled the knife free long enough to slash at it.

He took the tip off its nose, and the severed scrap flew back into the burning kitchen. It didn’t seem to notice.

The two at the other end of the kitchen were back, with dripping towels, and trying to beat out the flames. Smith ignored them; he was concentrating on hacking open the chest of the one beneath him, the one, he realized, that wore Nora Hagarty’s skin.

The other one was still trying to pry him loose; he twisted, and bit its hand.

It howled, and fell back, away from him.

“Hey,” someone called, “Give us a hand here!”

The false Nora Hagarty had its hands on his throat now, and that, combined with the smoke, made it almost impossible to breathe. His vision started to dim.

He pulled the knife free and to the side, and shoved his face down between the thing’s breasts. He began chewing.

It screamed, and scrabbled at him with its claws, but in doing so it released his throat. He lifted his head long enough to gulp air, then dove back down, ignoring the smell and the taste and the flailing claws.

Blood was running from somewhere and dripping from his chin, and the heat of the fire was like a furnace at his back. The other three creatures were no longer concerned with him at all; they were all concentrating solely on the fire, which was blazing up wildly, seemingly unstoppable.

The screaming continued, an eerie inhuman screeching that hurt his ears, but Smith was used to that now.

He ignored it.

Some small part of Smith’s brain, somewhere beneath the unthinking berserk panic that drove him, was noting that nightmare people, as he had previously seen, were not much on empathy, even for their own kind. The three of them had apparently decided that the fire was a greater danger to them than Smith, or at least a more immediate one, and they were selfishly letting him kill their comrade, right in front of them, while they tried to stop the blaze from spreading.

Well, after all, weren’t they self-proclaimed evil incarnate? Loyalty to one’s kind would be foreign to them.

Something moved, close up against his face, something cool and damp that squirmed, and he remembered that this thing had been ready to breed.

He raised his head and looked down.

The creature’s hands slapped onto his cheeks, claws extended; he grabbed them and yanked them away and looked at the thing’s open chest.

Where before he had always found a black slug-like mass that throbbed gently, here he found two, one much as always, and nestled against it a smaller one, shining moistly, that writhed like a dying, fresh-caught fish.

The larva.

Smith picked it up with one hand and flung it into the fire behind him.

He hoped that, immature as it was, that would kill it; he wasn’t about to eat the thing.

Even if the fire didn’t kill it, just being without a host body might be enough. The nightmare he had interrogated the week before had said that the larvae were vulnerable until they found hosts.

Claws projecting through the skin of Nora’s fingertips raked down his face again, and he forgot the larva as he struggled to force his target’s hands and arms aside, to get back at its heart before the opening in its chest closed up again.

He bent his head down and pressed with his full weight, and the arms gave. His face sank into the oozing mess, his teeth closed on the black core; he held his breath, closed his eyes, and continued eating.

When it went limp he rolled off it, and realized that one of his shoelaces was on fire and both shoes were smoldering. One leg was obviously badly burned.

The other three nightmare people were gone. The fire was raging out of control.

He staggered to his feet, ignoring the pain of his burns, the pain of the dozens of places that the nightmare thing had clawed him, and made his way out through the shattered glass door into a night of fire and chaos.

There were still plenty of nightmare people around, and A building was still untouched by the conflagration, but Smith was too far gone to care about that. By now, he was unconcerned with anything but escape.

4.

Khalil had lost track of Smith, but although he was worried, he didn’t try to do anything about it. He watched the fire-fighters, the police, the crowds, unsure just what he was doing, and what he should be doing.

He saw some familiar faces here and there in the crowd, but he didn’t seek them out.

Then he noticed two of them together, looking worried — the Newell girls, who had come to the first meeting at Annie McGowan’s house and then walked out. They were standing on the sidewalk, not crossing the police line, but leaning and stretching as they tried to see what was happening.

Then one of them shrieked, “Daddy!,” audible even over the roaring chaos of the fire and the crowds, and ran toward a figure emerging from A Building, and then they were both running toward the figure, and Khalil watched as they embraced it.

He remembered that their parents were divorced, and that their father lived at Bedford Mills.

Their father had lived at Bedford Mills. He was dead now, and the thing they were holding was a nightmare person.

And it was hugging them back, and kissing them, and then it leaned over and squeezed one of the girls and kissed her hard on the mouth, a kiss that lingered far too long.

The girl seemed almost to be choking, rather than kissing back.

Khalil left his position and headed for the happy little threesome.

When the kiss ended, the recipient looked somewhat dazed and unhappy, her mouth twisted as if she had tasted something unpleasant. Her sister eyed her oddly.

Khalil stopped, a pace or two away, unsure how to proceed. He had no doubt of what had just happened, but how could he tell her what had just been done to her? How could he get the girls away from their “father,” and away from this place where the nightmare people lurked in such numbers?

Just then a new outburst of noise swept over him, fresh screams and shouting, and he turned to see that B

Building was afire; something had just exploded in one of the ground-floor bedrooms, blowing window-glass out onto the lawn.

And staggering across the lawn between B Building and himself was Ed Smith, his clothes torn and blackened, his head and arms red with blood.

Inspiration struck.

“Miss Newell!” Khalil called, “Miss Newell! Can you help me with my friend? We must get him to a doctor!”

The Newells turned, and saw Khalil, and saw where he was pointing.

They ran to Smith, reaching him before Khalil could, and picked him up, supporting him.

“Where’s an ambulance?” the older girl asked. Khalil didn’t remember their first names.

Khalil shook his head. “We take his car,” he said, pointing. “I can drive.” He ran ahead and opened the doors, and the Newells loaded the semi-conscious Smith into the back seat, where blood and char and slime from his hands and clothes streaked the upholstery. The stink of smoke and decaying flesh filled the car.

One of the girls got in beside Smith, to support him; the other, at Khalil’s urging, got in the front passenger’s seat.

And the thing that had eaten their father could only watch as the four of them climbed in and drove away; the car only held four, with no room for a fifth. The creature started to protest, but Khalil started the engine and revved it, drowning him out.

And then they were off, away from the fire and out of Diamond Park.

5.

Dr. Henry Frauenthal marvelled at the variety of damage that this person calling himself Ed Smith had sustained. His legs and feet were badly burned, while his head and torso were bruised and abraded and liberally adorned with long, deep scratches.

Not all of them were fresh, either. A particularly interesting set of gouges in his side looked to be roughly a week old.

“I got caught in a burning kitchen,” Smith told the doctor, “And a lot of stuff fell on me, and this dog panicked and scratched me up.”

“Doesn’t look like any dog-bites I ever saw,” the doctor remarked. “Did you bring in the dog, so we can check for rabies?”

“Didn’t bite me,” Smith said, “Just clawed me when I tried to carry it out.” He was getting pretty good at impromptu lying, he thought. He’d had plenty of practice of late, luring the nightmare people out of their den.

Dr. Frauenthal left it at that. He checked over the bandages he had just finished applying, then nodded approval.

“That should do it,” he said. “Now, you just lie here and rest.” He turned to the others, who stood watching. Khalil had insisted that they be admitted, rather than waiting outside, and Frauenthal hadn’t wanted to waste time arguing when his patient was losing so much blood.

“I think he’ll be fine,” he said.

The girls smiled, but Khalil did not. “Doctor,” he said, “Please, you must look at these girls, too, and I think pump out their stomachs — one of them, anyway.”

The two girls both turned to stare at Khalil.

“What are you talking about?” the older one demanded.

“I am talking,” Khalil said, “about that thing that is not your father. It kissed one of you, there at the fire, and I think it did more than kiss.”

The older girl simply looked more confused, while the younger one’s mouth dropped open in astonishment.

“How did you ... I mean, what are you talking about?” she demanded.

“Miss Newell,” Khalil said, “I saw you at the meeting at Mrs. McGowan’s house, so I know you have heard this and not believed it, but it is the truth. That thing is not your father. It has killed him and taken his place. And now, it has begun to do the same to you, I think. When it kissed you, did it not feel peculiar?”

“Well, yeah,” the younger one admitted, looking uneasily at her sister.

“Maddie,” the elder said, “What are you talking about?”

“Well, it did, Alice,” Maddie said, “It felt really weird. Daddy never kissed me like that before. I mean, on the mouth, and then he opened his mouth, and at first I thought, you know, he was giving me the tongue, and that was pretty weird, I mean Daddy, doing that? But then it wasn’t his tongue at all, it felt like something else, and it sort of crawled into my mouth and I could tell it wasn’t Daddy at all, it was something he’d had in his mouth, and it tried to slide down my throat and I almost choked on it, and swallowed it without meaning to.”

Alice was staring at her.

“Really?” she asked.

Maddie nodded.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Alice demanded.

“Well, I thought maybe I’d just imagined it all, and besides, we were so busy, helping Mr. Smith and everything, I hadn’t had a chance.” She looked as if she might cry. “And besides, it was Daddy who did it.”

The doctor had listened to all this, and looked utterly baffled. Smith was too weak to argue; he just lay back and watched. It was Khalil who said, “We should pump her stomach, yes?” Alice started to protest, but stopped when she saw Maddie nodding.

Dr. Frauenthal agreed.

6.

There were two things in Maddie Newell’s digestive tract that had no business there.

One was a significant quantity of blood, apparently her own, and all still fresh. It was as if she had suddenly acquired a severe bleeding ulcer, sometime in the past hour or two.

The other was a black thing about five inches long and an inch or so in diameter, slick and moist, with four tiny sets of razor-sharp, hook-shaped claws, two at the narrower end — what Khalil thought of as the tail — and two about two inches back from the “head.”

It also had a mouth in the head end, a narrow opening perhaps an inch long and lined with tiny needle teeth.

It was quite obvious what was responsible for the blood; the thing’s claws and teeth were smeared with bright red.

It was also obvious that the thing was still alive.

The little group in the examining room stared at it in horror as it squirmed vigorously in the plastic bottle that Dr. Frauenthal had sealed it in.

“That was inside me?” Maddie asked.

Dr. Frauenthal nodded.

“It’s out now,” he said, in a vain attempt to sound comforting.

Maddie sat down, feeling faint.

“Kill it,” Alice said through clenched teeth.

Dr. Frauenthal shook his head. “It should already be dead,” he said. “I don’t know how to kill it.”

“Cut it up!” Alice said.

Frauenthal grimaced. “Ever see a flatworm cut in half?” he asked.

“Well, do something,” Alice insisted.

“What I’m going to do,” Frauenthal said, “is try and find out what it is.” Alice and Maddie both turned to look at Khalil; Dr. Frauenthal followed their gaze.

“Sir,” he said, “I take it these two think you know something about that thing in the bottle. And as it was your suggestion that it was in there, in her stomach, I assume they’re right.” Reluctantly, Khalil nodded. He looked at Smith, but Smith was obviously in no shape to comment.

He sighed, and started explaining.

The thing in the bottle squirmed helplessly as Khalil talked.

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 some thing 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

1.

When Khalil turned off the engine they both heard it — something was wailing.

The two men looked at each other. Then Smith opened his door.

“Come on,” he said, swinging his crutches out.

Khalil climbed out, and led the way up to the porch. They moved slowly, step by step, sweeping the lawn and shrubbery with Smith’s flashlight.

Everything seemed peaceful — except that inside the house something was screaming and weeping wildly.

And all the downstairs lights were on, even though it was well after one in the morning.

The noise didn’t seem human — but then, it probably wasn’t.

“Damn, I wonder what the neighbors think!” Smith muttered, as he awkwardly tried to mount the porch steps. He had had little practice using crutches; it had been a long, long time since he’d broken any bones, and he had never before done anything like burning his foot this badly.

Khalil rang the bell.

“Who is it?” Annie’s voice called a moment later.

“It is Khalil Saad,” he answered.

“Oh,” Annie called, “I wonder, could you come to the front window and draw a little blood, please?” Up until now, the standard procedure had been to open the front door and draw a few drops of blood there. Nobody had thought it was necessary to keep the door closed and use the window.

That didn’t mean it was a bad idea. Khalil looked at Smith, who tried to shrug and almost fell. They both made their way to the window.

Smith leaned on one crutch while he fished out his switchblade, then jabbed his left little finger and held it up where Annie could see it. It seemed a little stupid to be deliberately wounding himself like this when he was practically held together with bandages already, but he obliged his hostess.

Annie smiled at the sight of his blood, then looked expectantly at Khalil.

Khalil took the knife from Smith and pricked his own finger, reopening a wound he had already used several times.

Annie nodded. “Be right there!” she called through the glass.

A moment later the door opened, admitting them.

As they stepped inside Annie started to say something about the crutches, and Smith started to ask about the now-clearly-audible screaming, but Khalil cut them both off.

“Mrs. McGowan,” he said, “If you would please?” He held out the switchblade.

Annie grimaced, but she took the knife and stuck herself, piercing the scab on one finger.

Blood flowed redly.

She handed Smith the knife; he accepted it and put it back in his pocket, and all three of them relaxed.

“Annie,” Smith asked, as he closed the front door, “What’s the noise?”

“Oh, let me show you!” she said, clearly proud of herself. “It’s upstairs.” Smith was in no condition for climbing stairs. After several attempts, Khalil assisted him up the stairs, leaving the crutches in the foyer.

2.

Khalil and Smith stared down at the thing in the tub, Smith leaning heavily on Khalil’s shoulder.

The creature’s chest was sunken in, leaving a cavity roughly the size and shape of a football. Its T-shirt had been cut open and folded back, and the human skin beneath had been stripped off. Its feet, too, were bare of both shoes and skin.

The rest of it was wrapped in the shredded remains of a thick green plastic shower curtain, bound up tightly with loops and loops of picture wire around the legs, neck, and shoulders. Elsewhere, long strips of white adhesive tape and tan package tape criss-crossed the plastic. Its arms were bound behind it —

underneath it, now. Fluffy green towels were wrapped around its head and stuffed in its mouth.

The green wrapping made it look something like a gigantic ear of corn, still in the husk, with the towels forming the stem — but the grey feet didn’t look much like tassels, and the grey chest didn’t fit. It was as if the ear inside the husk had rotted away from within.

Except that rotted or not, it was moving. It twitched, and tossed its head from side to side, and it kept up an amazingly loud high-pitched moaning, despite the gag, that set Smith’s teeth on edge.

“It had your voice, Mr. Smith,” Annie said, smiling proudly. “I suppose it’s the one that was after you originally.”

Smith glanced at her, startled.

“Really?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” Annie said, nodding. “That’s how it got in. It had your voice.”

“What did...” Smith began. He stopped, and asked, “You cut out that black thing, the heart?”

“That’s right.”

“But you didn’t eat it?” he persisted.

“Not yet,” Annie admitted. “I just couldn’t. Not raw, not all slimy the way it was.”

“But ... where is it, then?” Smith asked.

Annie said, “Down in the kitchen.”

He turned back to the tub. “And it’s still alive?”

Annie nodded. “Has been for hours,” she said.

Smith shuddered; he felt suddenly queasy.

“Has it been screaming the whole time?” he asked.

“Oh, no, not really,” Annie told him. “Just sometimes. It’s not happy, of course, but it hasn’t screamed the whole time.”

Smith nodded. “I see,” he said uneasily. He reached down and pulled the towels away from its face.

It looked up at him from red, inhuman eyes. The skin on its face hung in tatters.

“You!” it said, in a hoarse imitation of Smith’s own voice.

Smith nodded. “Yup, me,” he agreed.

“You,” it said, “I came here for you.”

“I thought you might,” Smith said, “But I wasn’t expecting it to be tonight.” It made an indescribable noise.

“You left us a note at the Samaans’ house,” Smith said.

It nodded, wary.

“You said something about itching?”

“Yes,” it said, “The skins itch. They ... we’re grown to fit. Each of us grows to fit a particular skin, and any other skin will itch, always. It’s horrible.”

Smith blinked. “But the skins wear out,” he said.

The thing nodded. “I know,” it said.

“But that means that eventually, you’ll all be wearing itchy, wrong skins.”

“I know,” it said.

Smith shook his head. “Bad design,” he said.

The thing jerked about, but said nothing.

“You know,” Smith said, “I think that there’s a lot of bad design in you things. The way you breed, where it takes two weeks and it can be aborted with a stomach pump if you catch it early enough, that’s not really very efficient. And you’re dependent on your stolen skins for a lot, and you aren’t any stronger than some of your prey — you rely a lot on surprise and ignorance, don’t you?” The creature blinked up at him.

“I know you can slip through narrow places, and change your shape somewhat, but it’s not easy, is it? I mean, you can’t just melt down and slide away under a door.”

“Not...” the thing said, then hesitated.

“Go on,” Smith said, “What good do you think it’s going to do to hold back? We’ve got your heart down in the kitchen — or is it so much a heart as the larva you grew from?” The thing managed to shrug at that. “Name’s not important,” it said.

“You were saying, about shape-changing?”

“Only ... can’t do it in sunlight. And can’t do it if we know someone’s watching.” Smith smiled. “That’s why you couldn’t get through my window that first night, because I was watching you? Shit, that’s as stupid as vampires and garlic.”

The nightmare just stared up at him.

Smith bent down a little farther.

“You know,” he said, “One of you told me that you’re supposed to be the next step for supernatural evil, the predator that can finally wipe out humanity. I think that’s bull. I think you’re an evolutionary dead end, just like vampires — except I’d bet my shirt you guys aren’t going to last any three hundred years.” He straightened up and turned away.

“Come on,” he said, gesturing to Khalil and Annie, “Let’s go.” As Smith worked his way back downstairs, one step at a time, he asked Annie, “What did you do with its heart?”

“Oh,” she said, “Well, I told you, I couldn’t face eating it raw, so I sautéed it with butter and mushrooms and onions. I was just starting on it when you two got here — that was what got the screaming started again. Would you two care to join me?”

Smith gagged and almost lost his balance.

“Sautéed?” he asked.

Annie nodded.

Smith was appalled by the thought — but when Annie served out the portions he suppressed his reservations and ate his share.

He had to admit that although it still tasted horrible, it was better than eating them raw.

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.” 4.

Obviously, I agreed.

I don’t usually do stuff like this. People have tried to get me to write up their story ideas for them before, and generally I’m just not interested. I have plenty of ideas of my own, and usually the people who try this have a really peculiar idea of what the story is worth and how the money should be divided. Ideas are cheap; it’s turning them into stories and getting them down on paper that’s the hard work.

This wasn’t the usual situation, though. I don’t usually have some guy I played poker with a couple of times turning up on my doorstep at ten p.m. one night with his friend who has “something important” to tell me, where the friend is on crutches and has more bandage than bare skin showing.

I wasn’t busy, and the kids were in bed, and I liked George when I played cards with him, so I agreed to listen.

It wasn’t the usual situation. The people who want me to write their stories for them don’t usually say the money doesn’t matter, I can keep it all, so long as the story gets published.

And nobody ever suggested a story to me that was anything like this one before.

Of course, the story isn’t like anything I’ve ever written before, either; as George said, I’m a science fiction writer, and I’ve never written anything set here and now, in contemporary Maryland, before. My wife Julie said she didn’t think I should do it. She pointed out that I was under contract for other stuff, which was certainly true.

I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try, though, so long as I got something in writing that these people weren’t going to sue me for stealing their story. I didn’t make any promises that it would be published, or how it would be published if it ever was.

I didn’t really believe it, of course. Neither did Julie. We didn’t know how this guy had gotten all chewed up and burnt, but we didn’t think it was done by monsters.

But it was a good story.

So I agreed, and I wrote it all out just the way Ed Smith told it to me. It took a couple of nights to get all of it straight; the second night they brought Khalil along, just to prove he existed. Nice guy. Very quiet.

I still didn’t really believe it, and I still don’t, but I took what they told me and wrote it up as the novel you’ve just read. I changed a couple of the names, just in case; you won’t find a real Lieutenant Daniel Buckley on the Montgomery County police force, or a real Dr. Frauenthal practicing around here.

Wherever I needed a new name I picked one from a list of the survivors of the Titanic — it seemed appropriate — but most names I didn’t change.

The apartment complex that burned down last August wasn’t really called Bedford Mills, either. That was the only other change I made.

I didn’t alter any of the events; as Smith said, you never know what little detail might turn out to be important to someone. I tried to tell them well, but just as they happened, nothing added or removed.

It took awhile to write the whole thing out, but I did it, and now I’ve found a publisher for it, who’ll buy it as a horror novel, and I’m starting to feel a little guilty. After all, all I did was write down what they told me.

I think Ed and George and Khalil ought to get a cut. After what happened here, they could probably use the money.

But I don’t have an address for Ed Smith, and there are a hundred Smiths in every phone book. He said he was going to California, but a letter to “Edward J. Smith, California” isn’t going to do the job.

George Brayton and Khalil Saad have both moved away, as well, and neither of them left a forwarding address. Annie McGowan won’t talk to me; she’s retiring to Florida, and says she just wants to forget the whole thing. Maggie Devanoy’s gone off to school somewhere. Neither one will admit to knowing where Smith went, or George, or Khalil. Neither will anyone else I’ve talked to.

So Ed, I’m holding half the money for you, but I haven’t been able to reach you, or George, or Khalil.

Half this money is yours.

Just tell me where to send it.

— Lawrence Watt-Evans

Gaithersburg, Maryland

About the Author

Lawrence Watt-Evans is the author of more than two dozen novels, and more than a hundred short stories. He served as president of the Horror Writers Association from 1994 to 1996. Further

information can be found at http://www.watt-evans.com.

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