Dreams Underfoot: A Newford Collection (20 page)

“So this guy,” he said. “Chad. He been gone long?” The smile faltered.

“Three and a half weeks now,” she said.

That explained a lot. Nothing made you forget your own troubles so much as running into someone who had them worse. “Not too bright a guy, I guess,” he said.

“That’s ... Thank you, Nicky. I guess I need to hear that kind of thing.”

“Hey, I’m a bum. We’ve got nothing better to do than to think up nice things to say.”

“You were never a bum, Nicky.”

“Yeah. Well, things change.”

She took the hint. As they walked on, she talked about the book she’d started reading last night instead.

It took them fifteen minutes or so to reach her apartment on McKennitt, right in the heart of Lower Crowsea. It was a walk-up with its own stairwell—a narrow, winding affair that started on the pavement by the entrance of a small Lebanese groceteria and then deposited you on a balcony overlooking the street.

Inside, the apartment had the look of a recent split-up. There was an amplifier on a wooden orange crate by the front window, but no turntable or speakers. The bookcase to the right of the window had gaps where apparently random volumes had been removed. A pair of rattan chairs with bright slipcovers stood in the middle of the room, but there were no end tables to go with them, nor a coffee table. She was making do with another orange crate, this one clut-tered with magazines, a couple of plates stacked on top of each other and what looked like every coffee mug she owned squeezed into the remaining space. A small portable black-and-white Zenith TV stood at the base of the bookcase, alongside a portable cassette deck. There were a couple of rectangles on the wall where paintings had obvi-ously been removed. A couple of weeks’ worth of newspapers were in a pile on the floor by one of the chairs.

She started to apologize for the mess, then smiled and shrugged. Nicky had to smile with her. Like he was going to complain about the place, looking like he did.

She showed him to the bathroom. By the time he came out again, showered and shaved, dressed in a pair of Chad’s corduroys and a white linen shirt, both of which were at least a size too big, she had a salad on the tiny table in the kitchen, wine glasses out, the bottle waiting for him to open it, breaded pork chops and potatoes on the stove, still cooking.

Nicky’s stomach grumbled at the rich smell that filled the air.

She talked a little about her failed marriage over dinner—sound-ing sad rather than bitter—but more about old times at the univer-sity. As she spoke, Nicky realized that the only thing they had shared back then had been that English class; still he let her ramble on about campus events he only half-remembered and people who’d meant nothing to him then and even less now.

But at least they hadn’t been freaks.

He corrected himself. He hadn’t been able to
recognize
the freaks among them back then.

“God, listen to me,” Luann said suddenly.

They were finished their meal and sitting in her living room having coffee. He’d been wrong; there were still two clean mugs in her cupboard.

“I am,” he said.

She gave him that smile of hers again—this time it had a wistful-ness about it.

“I know you are,” she said. “It’s just that all I’ve been talking about is myself. What about you, Nicky? What happened to you?”

“I .. 4

11

Where did he start? Which lie did he give her?

That was the one good thing about street people. They didn’t ask questions. Whatever put you there, that was your business. But citizens always wanted whys and hows and wherefores.

As he hesitated, she seemed to realize her faux pas.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If you don’t want to talk about it ...”

“It’s not that,” Nicky told her. “It’s just ...”

“Hard to open up?”

Try impossible. But oddly enough, Nicky found himself wanting to talk to her about it. To explain. To ease the burden. Even to warn her, because she was just the kind of person the freaks went for.

The fire inside her shimmered off her skin like a high voltage aura, sending shadows skittering. It was a bright shatter of light and a deep golden glow like honey, all at the same time. It sparked in her eyes; blazed when she smiled. Sooner or later it was going to draw a nest of the freaks to her, just as surely as a junkie could sniff out a fix.

“There’s these ... things,” he said slowly. “They look enough like you or me to walk among us—especially at night—but they’re ... they’re not human.”

She got a puzzled look on her face which didn’t surprise him in the least.

“They’re freaks,” he said. “I don’t know what they are, or where they came from, but they’re not natural. They feed on us, on our hopes and our dreams, on our vitality. They’re like ... I guess the best analogy would be that they’re like vampires. Once they’re on to you, you can’t shake them. They’ll keep after you until they’ve bled you dry.”

Her puzzlement was turning to a mild alarm, but now that he’d started, Nicky was determined to tell it all through, right to the end. “What,” she began.

“What I do,” he said, interrupting her, “is hunt them down.”

The song by 10,000 Maniacs ended and the boom box’s speakers offered up another to the fading day. Nicky couldn’t name the band this time, but he was familiar with the song’s punchy rhythm. The lead singer was talking about burning beds ....

Beside the machine, Luann put down her book and stretched.

Do it, Nicky thought. Get out of here. Now. While you still can.

Instead, she lay down on the blanket, hands behind her head, and looked up into the darkening sky, listening to the music. Maybe she was looking for the first star of the night.

Something to wish upon.

The fire burned in her brighter than any star. Flaring and ebbing to the pulse of her thoughts.

Calling to the freaks.

Nicky’s fingers clenched into fists. He made himself look away. But even closing his eyes, he couldn’t ignore the fire. Its heat sparked the distance between them as though he lay beside her on the blanket, skin pressed to skin. His pulse drummed, twinning her heartbeat.

This was how the freaks felt. This was what they wanted, what they hungered for, what they fed on.

This was what he denied them. The spark of life.

The sacred fire.

He couldn’t look away any longer. He had to see her one more time, her fire burning, burning ...

He opened his eyes to find that the twilight had finally found Fitzhenry Park. And Luann—she was blazing like a bonfire in its dusky shadows.

“What do you mean, you hunt them down?” she asked. “I kill them,” Nicky told her.

“But—”

“Understand, they’re not human. They just
look
like us, but their faces don’t fit quite right and they wear our kind of a body like they’ve put on an unfamiliar suit of loose clothing.”

He touched his borrowed shirt as he spoke. She just stared at him—all trace of that earlier smile gone. Fear lived in her eyes now.

That’s it, he told himself. You’ve done enough. Get out of here.

But once started, he didn’t seem to be able to stop. All the lonely years of the endless hunt came spilling out of him.

“They’re out there in the night,” he said. “That’s when they can get away with moving among us.

When their shambling walk makes you think of drunks or some feeble old homeless bag lady—not of monsters. They’re freaks and they live on the fire that makes us human.”

“The ... the fire ... ?

He touched his chest.

“The one in here,” he said. “They’re drawn to the ones whose fires burn the brightest,” he added.

“Like yours does.”

She edged her chair back from the table, ready to bolt. Then he saw her realize that there was no place to bolt to. The knowledge sat there in her eyes, fanning the fear into an ever-more debilitating panic. Where was she going to go that he couldn’t get to her first?

“I know what you’re thinking,” he said. “If someone had come to me with this story before I ... found out about them—”

(“Momma! Daddy!” he could hear his daughter crying. “The monsters are coming for me!”

Soothing her. Showing her that the closet was empty. But never thinking about the window and the fire escape outside it. Never thinking for a minute that the freaks would come in through the window and take them both when he was at work.

But that was before he’d known about the freaks, wasn’t it?)

He looked down at the table and cleared his throat. There was pain in his eyes when his gaze lifted to meet hers again—pain as intense as her fear.

“If someone had told me,” he went on, “I’d have recommended him for the Zeb, too—just lock him up in a padded cell and throw away the key. But I don’t think that way now. Because I can see them. I can recognize them. All it takes is one time and you’ll never disbelieve again.

“And you’ll never forget.”

“You ... you just kill these people ... ?” she asked.

Her voice was tiny—no more than a whisper. Her mind was tape looped around the one fact. She wasn’t hearing anything else.

“I told you—they’re not people,” he began, then shook his head.

What was the point? What had he thought was going to happen? She’d go, yeah, right, and jump in to help him? Here, honey, let me hold the stake. Would you like another garlic clove in your lunch?

But they weren’t vampires. He didn’t know what they were, just that they were dangerous.

Freaks.

“They know about me,” he said. “They’ve been hunting me for as long as I’ve been hunting them, but I move too fast for them. One day, though, I’ll make a mistake and then they’ll have me. It’s that, or the cops’ll pick me up and I wouldn’t last the night in a cell. The freaks’d be on me so fast ...”

He let his voice trail off Her lower lip was trembling. Her eyes looked like those of some small panicked creature, caught in a trap, the hunter almost upon her.

“Maybe I should go,” he said.

He rose from the table, pretending he didn’t see the astonished relief in her eyes. He paused at the door that would let him out onto the balcony.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said.

“I ... you ...”

He shook his head. “I should never have come.”

She still couldn’t string two words together. Still didn’t believe that she was getting out of this alive.

He felt bad for unsettling her the way he had, but maybe it was for the best. Maybe she wouldn’t bring any more strays home the way she had him. Maybe the freaks’d never get to her.

“Just think about this,” he said, before he left. “What if I’m right?”

Then he stepped outside and closed the door behind him.

He could move fast when he had to—it was what had kept him alive through all these years. By the time she reached her living room window, he was down the stairs and across the street, looking back at her from the darkened mouth of an alleyway nestled between a yuppie restaurant and a bookstore, both of which were closed. He could see her, studying the street, looking for him.

But she couldn’t see him.

And that was the way he’d keep it.

He came out of the bushes, the mask of his face shifting and unset-tled in the poor light. Luann was sitting up, fiddling with the dial on her boom box, flipping through the channels. She didn’t hear him until he was almost upon her. When she turned, her face drained of color. She sprawled backwards in her attempt to escape and then could only lie there and stare, mouth working, but no sound coming out. He lunged for her

But then Nicky was there. The hunting knife that he carried in a sheath under his shirt was in his hand, cutting edge up. He grabbed the freak by the back of his collar and hauled him around. Before the freak could make a move, Nicky rammed the knife home in the freak’s stomach and ripped it up. Blood sprayed, showering them both.

He could hear Luann screaming. He could feel the freak jerking in his grip as he died. He could taste the freak’s blood on his lips. But his mind was years and miles away, falling back and back to a small apartment where his wife and daughter had fallen prey to the mon-sters his daughter told him were living in the closet ....

The freak slipped from his grip and sprawled on the grass. The knife fell from Nicky’s hand. He looked at Luann, finally focusing on her. She was on her knees, staring at him and the freak like they were both aliens.

“He ... his face ... he ...”

She could barely speak.

“I can’t do it anymore,” he told her.

He was empty inside. Couldn’t feel a thing. It was as though all those years of hunting down the freaks had finally extinguished his own fire.

In the distance he could hear a siren. Someone must have seen what went down. Had to have been a citizen, because street people minded their own business, didn’t matter what they saw.

“It ends here,” he said.

He sat down beside the freak’s corpse to wait for the police to arrive.

“For me, it ends here.”

Late the following day, Luann was still in shock.

She’d finally escaped the endless barrage of questions from both the police and the press, only to find that being alone brought no relief. She kept seeing the face of the man who had attacked her. Had it really seemed to
shift
about like an ill-fitting mask, or had that just been something she’d seen as a result of the poor light and what Nicky had told her?

Their faces don’t fit quite right ....

She couldn’t get it out of her mind. The face. The blood. The police dragging Nicky away. And all those things he’d told her last night.