Tales from the Nightside (24 page)

I rushed to the elevator as I shuffled through my patented list of excuses, was about to step in when Bob Parker popped out of his office at the hall's far end. He lifted a hand and I held the door for him, nodded cheerily, and saw him frown when I hit the button for the fourteenth floor.

"Any problems, Bob?" I said. He and I did not exactly get along like brothers. He was young, I not so, and his ambitions outreached mine by the proverbial country mile.

"Why bother,” he said. "No one's there."

The doors slid open, and I couldn't help but gape—the receptionist's desk was deserted. But it never, ever was left unattended. The doors slid shut again, and Bob pressed for the lobby.

I tried not to sound completely ignorant when I said, "I think I've missed something, Bob."

His eyes widened. "You mean..." He tried a laugh, and he failed miserably. "My God, Andy, you mean no one's said anything to you yet? Didn't anyone call you this morning? The radio—"

"No one called me,” I told him, wondering at the sudden pallor beneath his year-round tan. "And I sang my way into work for a change."

"Jesus." He stared at the backlighted ceiling, the paneled walls, the tips of his shoes. "Holy God, this is dreadful. This is terrible."

My patience died. My fists clenched. "What is terrible, Bob? What in... what are you talking about?"

"Well, they called this morning, see, and I came in anyway just for a minute because I had these papers and..."He slapped at the wall, reached vainly for my arm. "My God, Andy, they're dead!"

I know I looked foolish, but I couldn't help it. His babbling wasn't telling me a thing. "Who?"

"Crayton, Jackie, David. They're..."

It was like being bludgeoned on a bright day in the middle of the park while little children played joyfully around your legs. I fell back against the wall, holding up a quick hand when Parker took a step toward me. "No, it's all... dead?"

He nodded. "Sometime after midnight it was," he told me. Then he lowered his voice as we left the elevator and headed for the street. "The police aren't saying anything much in their bulletins, but my brother, John, he knows this cute little clerk who works on the night desk. He said—now get this, Andy—he said one of the patrols found them. They were in that big Mercedes that David has, parked on the side of the road. Windows rolled up, doors all locked from the inside. They had to bust through a window to get to them. John says—and he'll kill me if he knows I told you this there was so much blood around the bodies had to be washed off before they could find the wounds that killed them.”

There was more, but I didn't hear it. I shook hands, I think, and made my way to the parking lot where I sat behind the wheel and smoked three or four cigarettes, each from the butt of the other. I kept the windows down.

Jackie: little breasts, big hips, rode me like a bull and had the same kind of temper; Crayton: stiff, pompous, fair in his way and completely ruthless; Mclnroe: a shell that looked like a human being and was filled with a bile that infected everything he touched, including my ambitions.

Dead. Blooded. Three with one blow. Wasn't there a fairy-tale tailor who did something like that?

I don't remember the drive back home, nor letting myself in or ripping the tie from my neck. Everything was a blank until I stood at the dining room's bow window and saw the low mounds of fresh dirt in Roger's yard.

Jesus, I thought, and pulled down the shades.

***

The next few days were remarkably clear and unusually warm again for the time of year; and of course, I attended the funerals. I registered none of the services, however, or the faces of those who stood with me; I only knew there were caskets, and they were polished, and they were sullied with fresh dirt.

Roger.

Bet called me a couple of times, pleading, and I told her at each call that I had not forgotten, that all I was waiting for was the covering fog.

I waited until there was nothing for it but that I would have to do it anyway, take my chances one night and pray that my friend hadn't gone all the way around the bend. I had seen him only once after the killings—the newspapers said dogs, but the windows were rolled up—and all he did then was look at me and nod knowingly.

Bet was standing beside him—a shadow, nothing more. Bastard, I thought, in the hope he could hear me; it was one thing to go about ruining your own life, you sonofabitch, but to take that woman down with... I glared, nearly lifted my middle finger to him, and stalked away.

The firm collapsed, and I did not like the looks of the future.

No one else died; and it was the night before Thanksgiving.

The temperature fell, the rain fell, and by twilight there was such a fog that not even the dowager London dared claim it for her own. It was thick in layers, each twisting away briefly as a timorous breeze crept through, then folding back again as solid as before. I had been in the city with my resumes and hopes, and it took me over two hours to get home again, another to warm up sufficiently to remember my promise, remember this was the night I had been waiting for.

Roger nodding and Bet a shadow—God, I didn't think I could hate so much!

In the garage I located a shovel I hadn't used in months. I hefted it, slipped into a black windbreaker, and went outside.

Through the hedge.

There were no lights in the Dillans' kitchen; one upstairs where I knew the bathroom was.

I shook a fist at it and mouthed a silent obscenity.

It was hard to breathe. Every time I inhaled it was like an invitation to a drowning. I had a small flashlight, and it flared the fog back at me mockingly. Calm, I told myself, and with the flash pinned between arm and chest I began to dig. The light bobbed erratically, showing me dirt, fog, dirt, fog... the fog that seemed to have pulled back now as though to help me, roiling like smoke, sprouting man-o'-war tendrils that were waiting... waiting. I saw faces. Snarling faces. Claws. Fangs. I saw monsters culled from every damned Saturday matinee I had ever attended.

The fog was cold.

Scrape... thud.

My hands were slippery with perspiration; once, my grip slid down the smooth handle and I nearly impaled myself.

Faces.

Stop it, I ordered myself.

Digging.

The bathroom light went out, and I was alone in the dark.

I'm not exactly positive what happened next, what caused it. I don't know if it was my rage at what Roger was doing to himself and to the woman I could never have, or the exasperation of hunting for a job that no one wanted to give me in spite of my experience, or if it was somehow those idiot stories I remembered from around a warm campfire under trees that grasped and winds that whispered—but suddenly I dropped to my knees and pushed the shovel aside, using my hands to work at that foul grave, not caring if anyone heard me, only wanting to get the ugly thing done.

And a minute or so later my fingers struck something soft, giving, and I snatched them away with a silent cry of disgust. Awkwardly, I held the shovel near the blade and scraped at the dirt, the other hand holding the flash until I could see what I was uncovering.

I didn't have to exhume the whole thing; the head and shoulders were enough. Despite all the time in the ground, despite the workings of whatever lived beneath the surface, I knew what those tufted ears were, those eyes slanted even in death.

It was a bobcat.

A goddamned bobcat.

Relief, then, and a boiling surge of anger.

I spat, and wiped my hands hard against my thighs; I sniffed, and rubbed a forearm under my nose; and I began to laugh quietly, shaking my head, dropping the shovel at last and holding my hands in my lap.

A goddamned more-frightened-than-he-was bobcat.

The porch light, the kitchen light, both snapped on. The door opened, and I heard footsteps coming down the stairs and across the sodden grass. I did not resist when hands grabbed my shoulders roughly and yanked me to my feet.

"Bastard!" Roger said.

"Me?" My voice cracked high. "Me? It's... it's a bobcat, you stupid sonofabitch! A lousy bobcat cub you could have chased off with a feather. And for this I've been through hell? For this you've turned your wife into a—"

He slapped me. He rocked me back over the uncovered grave,

I and I stumbled, fell flailing with the flashlight still gripped in my § hand. I lay there for a long time, gulping for air and attempting to make sense of something, anything that might prevent me from slamming the shovel across his thick skull. And he... he, the idiot, was standing there as though I had already done it. His lips worked, his eyes glazed, and I knew suddenly that I had done something to him, though I had no idea what. Killed a dream, If perhaps, a child's dream that there were indeed things beyond a f normal man's knowledge—and Roger had wanted it, he had wanted it desperately. So desperately that he had allowed his befuddled, pressure-ridden mind to create things for him out of bobcats and fogs and dark November nights.

I suppose I should have felt sorry for him. But he hadn't taken into consideration what he had done to Betty, and to me. Me, thinking all those people had been, might possibly have been, killed by some mythical fairy-tale beast. Me, praying each night for the fog that I loathed, the fog that I detested. He had made me make a fool out of myself, crawling around in the mud, digging up the body of a stupid—

I damned near screamed.

I do know I flung the flashlight behind me, heard it strike a rock, and saw its beam angle upward toward the trees. I know that I scrambled to my feet and took a step toward him. And I know that I saw Betty on the landing, the kitchen light clouding behind her as she held the collar of her bathrobe close about her throat.

And then I saw Roger smiling.

Crazy, I thought; the man's crazy.

But the smile was a curious one. There was... there was reason there, clear and present sanity, and such pure and joyous satisfaction that I stopped moving toward him and stared.

"Roger?"

His gaze touched me for a moment, then slid away.

Dear God, I couldn't help it—I turned around.

The lights from the house outlined it. The flashlight's beam caught the deep startling green of its myriad eyes. I admitted to the fangs; I acknowledged the claws; and I also knew it wasn't a bobcat. It was nightmares too large and deathshades too pale, and danced too much like the fog that gave it form. It must have been this way when the stories were told, and it must have been this way when Jackie and the others had seen it, waiting for them out there on the dark deserted road. They had closed the windows, and maybe they screamed, but fog has a way of getting into places where nothing else can.

The only thing I didn't do then was try to decide if it was my anger that gave it direction, or Roger's. He was, after all, my dearest friend; his pains were mine, and my agonies his.

I took one last look at Bet, and I ran.

Roger whispered something to me, and I ran.

But there's one more thing about fog in the country—
it's there
; it's...
there
.

So when my jacket caught in the brambles of the hedge, I had no time to learn what made the fog... alive.

No time to move.

And Roger had whispered: "Andy, my friend, Betty told me all about you."

No time at all... in the swift-moving fog.

The Tanners' small living room was almost too comfortably warm to stay awake in, but Gary rubbed impatiently at the stinging under his eyelids, ignoring another invitation from his mother to sit beside her and watch one of his favorite television programs. It was Friday again, and if the fire was to come, he had to be alert. He knew no one would believe him if he fell asleep in the middle of his warning.

After a restless trip around the room, he perched on the board inside ledge of the bay window and traced incomplete faces in the frosted mist that coated the brittle cold panes. Outside, the late January night seemed fragile without a moon and he was sure that simply by stepping out onto the porch he could shutter the darkness as if it were a thin seath of new ice. The fireplace burned a reflection without warmth, and he poked at it, then leaned his cheek against the glass and shifted so that he could see down the lightless country road toward the weak glow of Covington's business district. Behind him, the television muttered quietly, a cigarette lighter snapped, and his father slammed cabinet doors in the kitchen.

In spite of his determination and the chill against his face, Gary felt his eyes closing and shook his head sharply. He grinned, then, when he heard his father drop a glass, but before he could call out a teasing remark he blinked and pulled quickly away from the window as if he had been stung. One hand tagged nervously at his shirt, and he looked again.

"Hey, Dad?"

There was a deep-throated muttering in the hall, and "hush!" from his mother.

"Hey, Dad, I think there’s."

Suddenly, a screaming brace of patrol cars sped past the house, their circling warning lights turning the remains of the last snowfall an intermittent pink. The sirens barely had time to fade before the emergency squad alarm began hooting urgently across the valley. Immediately the room chilled as his father stumbled in, trying to slip into his bulky overcoat and lace his boots at the same time. Gary scrambled off the ledge and knelt to help with the laces.