Ed Gorman - Nightmare Child

"You're insane, Mindy. I've been needing to tell you this for some time. You are insane."

"Of course, I don't blame you for what you did. I mean, she made you. She took off her glasses and made you stare into her eyes and-" She coughed again. "Any way you could come home early?"

"Around five would be the earliest."

"Tonight's going to be the night. Tonight we're going to take care of her, Jeff. Or she'll take care of us."

"Mindy, I wish you'd please lie down."

"Oh, now, that would do a fat lot of good, wouldn't it?"

"Lie down. Take two of your tranquilizers."

"And just get some rest?"

"Exactly. Get some rest."

"You're the one who should get some rest, Jeffie-poo. You're going to need it for tonight."

"What's tonight?"

"We're going to kill Jenny. And this time do it the right way."

With that, she hung up.

It was by accident that Jeff ran into-literally-Brenda Kohl.

Out of coffee in his office, and his secretary having gone home early because her oldest boy was ill, Jeff carried his Mr. Coffee pot down to the lunchroom for more water and to see if there was any Danish left from that morning. Jeff liked Danish just as it started to turn stale.

Finished with his task, carrying both pot filled with water and peach Danish, he came around the corner and slammed directly into Brenda, dousing the front of her white linen suit with water.

Jeff made all the expected noises of apology and regret. He had not been in the Hubba-Hubba Room with Brenda in more than three months. Not that he hadn't asked her. He did so regularly, at least once a week. She always turned him down. Having finally gotten her promotion to Art Director-thanks to Jeff's intervening-it soon became obvious that she wanted no more to do with him. There was even talk that she had a new boyfriend, an intense, swarthy young man in the television production department named Gillian.

Finished daubing at her with several pieces of paper towels, he took her elbow and led her away, to an alcove in the hallway.

"You don't know how badly I feel," he said.

"It's not that big a deal. It's just water." She glanced at her diamond-studded watch, obviously eager to be gone.

"That's not what I mean. I mean-" He knew he was whining again. He couldn't help himself. "I mean, you're all I've been thinking about, and I finally get a chance to see you and I end up doing something stupid like this."

"It's all right, Jeff. It's really all right." This time she looked at her watch in a dramatic, unmistakable fashion so he'd get the point.

She started walking past him, but he stopped her with the hand carrying the Mr. Coffee.

"How about going-you know-downstairs?"

She seemed startled. "God, Jeff, don't be pathetic. You know it's over between us."

He had never seen a woman with less compassion in her eyes than Brenda displayed at this moment.

"I just want to talk to you for a few minutes."

Pretending not to hear him, she waved at two men passing by. One of them winked at her. Jeff's failed love for her was common knowledge in this pitiless hallway.

"A few minutes. In my office. We don't even have to go downstairs, then. In my office? How would that be?"

She frowned. "God, Jeff, you're really frightening me. You're losing it. Don't you see that? You're losing it."

He felt the heat begin in his belly. It was like the pain of an ulcer, only fifty times worse. He started to double over and clutch for the wall, but it was then that he noticed his hand and heard her begin to scream.

Across from where he stood was a framed oil painting of the agency founder, a white-haired man all got up in a white commodore's suit. In the glass of the painting, Jeff could see his own reflection. He understood why Brenda was screaming. He wanted to scream, too.

His head was a bubbling mass of leprosy-like open sores dripping green pus. Over this was a scraggly covering of oily black hair. His hands had also distended and were large, gnarled claws with the same open sores as on his head.

He reached for her to assure her everything would soon be all right, but she only screamed all the more and fled down the hall.

He could hear doors opening and male voices shouting, asking her what was wrong. She was so upset that she couldn't tell them in any coherent way.

Jeff glanced around. In either direction he went, he was bound to run into somebody. He had no idea what had happened to him, and there was no time right now to think about it.

Instinctively, he started down the carpeted hall. Footfalls sounded behind him. People-getting closer.

Seeing a broom closet, he dived forward, grasping the doorknob, and jumping inside.

In the darkness, pushed far back against the wall, he stood sweating, chest heaving, feeling the searing warmth cover his body, smelling a fetid odor that was like an animal that had lain dead for days in extreme heat.

At some point in his terror and delirium, he passed out, sliding down the wall, unconscious before he reached the floor in a heap.

He had no idea what time it was when he awoke. Disoriented, he grasped into the darkness, touching the edge of a tin bucket and the handle of a broom.

Closet.

A few memories came flooding back. He had been talking-well, pleading was a more accurate term-with Brenda when suddenly he had…

He did not want to think about it.

On hands and knees, he crawled to the door, eased it open.

The hall was in shadow. The building thrummed with building sounds. No human voices, not even faint ones, could be heard.

He glanced down at his digital watch. It was nearly midnight.

Stunned, he realized he must have been in the closet for nearly…ten hours!

Grappling to his feet, he went down the hallway, past darkened and silent work areas, to his own office.

In the frost-rimmed window was a portrait of the city late at night, the red light on the fifty-story Hawthorne Building warning pilots, the downtown area still ablaze and vast display windows filled with goodies, and the further city, up in the timbered hills, an unbroken chain of lights from the suburbs.

He was enjoying a certain peace looking at all this when the phone rang.

He turned sharply and looked at it as if it were a gun that had just been fired at his back.

It continued ringing, shatteringly loud, almost ugly in its ceaselessness.

He picked it up.

"You should have seen yourself, Jeff. You were really scary this afternoon."

Then she started laughing as, lately, she always laughed.

She hung up.

He stood there, frozen, numb, listening to the words she'd just spoken, wondering how she'd known about- Naked. Snow. Brook Crash.

The terrible memories were a little plainer now. He felt last night's pain from the cold, from his suicide attempt.

Yes, she had had something to do with that, too. Just as she'd had something to do with turning him into a repellent beast this afternoon right in front of Brenda…

He looked back at the phone.

How had she known just when to call?

"Oh, God," he said, slipping down into his chair, covering his face with his damp hands. He was no longer a monster, but he was not quite a man, either.

Jenny and her phone call had seen to that.

Jenny.

The following morning, Diane got up early to bake chocolate-chip cookies for an orphanage she worked at a few hours a month. She found the young people of the orphanage very appreciative of her efforts. She'd gotten to know many of them and liked them.

By ten o'clock that morning, the temperature outside below zero, the kitchen was warm and smelled sweetly of baking.

A yellow apron tied around her thin waist, Diane sat at the counter sipping decaf coffee and reading the paper. A festive red ribbon was affixed to the side of her lustrous dark hair.