Ed Gorman - Nightmare Child

Afterward, Robert struggled to his feet, struggled through the living room, and struggled to the hallway closet, where Diane had put his coat. She could see how he was literally dragging.

At the door, the wind spraying snow devils against the glass, he gave her one last kiss, which she happily accepted.

"You go to bed," he said, "right now."

"You, too," she said.

"You don't have to worry about that." He gave her hand a tiny squeeze and then started out the door.

Seeing him turn around, she felt a compulsion to take him in her arms again. Perhaps tomorrow…

"Good night," he said, waving as he walked to his car in the golden light of the drive.

"Good night," she said.

Twenty minutes after Robert left, Diane was under her electric blanket, reading the latest Sidney Sheldon novel. She got through three pages before falling asleep, the winter night vast and dark all around her house, the final light clipped off now that she slept.

Robert knew he should have gone straight home. Not only was he tired, he was perplexed.

He had begun to wonder if Diane was all right. While he had pretended that it was entirely possible for a ransacked house to be put back in perfect order in a matter of hours, he knew that it was an unlikely event, particularly when you added in blood and feces spread all over the walls.

Feeling deeply for Diane, even entertaining the thought of marrying her at some future date, his police training nonetheless made him a realist. The loss of a spouse was one of the major reasons people had breakdowns. While Diane was able to function superficially, he often sensed her loss and occasional despair. It would be easy enough, Clark knew, to transfer this loss and despair to a fantasy about the people in the house next door…whether that fantasy included blood and feces on the walls, or the man of the house running outside naked during a snowstorm.

Thinking of all this, he felt guilty, as if he were betraying his best friend. In a very real way, he was. He drove the narrow, two-lane blacktop that took him back to town, a golden oldie on the radio, the heater loud and warm beneath the dash. Snow blew in drifts across the road and every few miles he'd see the bright, sad eyes of some creature caught out in the storm.

He was almost back in town before he abruptly but carefully applied the brakes, found a driveway to turn into, then headed back to Stoneridge.

What he was about to do would at least make him feel that he'd given Diane every benefit of the doubt.

On his way back, he saw the moon in the cloudy sky. He had a sense of utter isolation as he drove along at twenty miles per hour, wire fencing around a cornfield to his right dragged down by wind and snow, the gently sloping hills to his left a perfect white in the moonlight.

Fifteen minutes later, he passed through the stone gates of the exclusive estate area, and then guided his car, lights off, to a small hill that looked down on both the McCay's place and Diane's.

Putting a piece of gum in his mouth-up to three years ago it would have been a Lucky Strike-he stretched his legs out to the other side of the car and proceeded to do something he hadn't done in years-stake out a house.

Memories of past stakeouts, especially during his post-Vietnam years as a Chicago detective, returned as he sat there watching the two dark houses. True to her word, Diane had gone to bed right away. As wind rocked the car, he started thinking of his vague wedding plans for them. He just hoped she was all right…

He had been there half an hour when he saw the strange green light flicker in a strobe-like effect on the second floor of the McCay house.

At first, he wondered if shadows weren't playing tricks on the darkened windows. But gradually, as he sat up and really began to watch, he saw that the intermittent flashes were in fact quite real.

Instinctively, he pushed himself to the door and out from under the steering wheel. The cold was immediate and without pity. Clapping his gloved hands together for warmth, he set off down the hill, knowing that if anyone were watching he would certainly be easy enough to see…a dark shape against the blue-white of midnight snow.

His nose numb, his eyes tearing up, he reached the edge of the McCay property already colder than he thought he could be in so short a time.

Upstairs, the green stroboscopic effect continued.

Walking around to one side of the house, his feet making loud crunching sounds, he began to hear, above the wind, a lewd kind of laughter, the sort he imagined would be heard at orgies. He had no idea to whom it belonged, only that in some terrible way it was disturbing.

Reaching the screened-in porch, staring a moment at the furniture, covered with tarpaulins for the winter, he eased himself up the steps, listening.

Once more, just above the edge of the furious wind, came the sounds of bawdy laughter. He tried to imagine any of the three people he'd seen that night-Jenny, Mindy, Jeff-laughing this way, but could not.

He opened the door, which made a scrawing sound from frozen hinges, and went inside.

From his coat pocket, he took a small metal pick, a type available to all classes of burglars. He fitted the pick to the lock on the doorknob and, within moments, stepped inside the kitchen.

Eerie shadows played across the refrigerator and the counters and cupboards. The scents of cinnamon and paprika almost forced him to sneeze. Silver frost rimmed the windows.

From upstairs, a muffled scream could be heard over the lewd laughter.

Cautiously, covered now with sweat and beginning to tremble, he moved toward the center of the house, and the wide, splendid staircase he had ascended earlier.

The first thing he noticed, the deeper he went into the home, was that several large pieces of expensive furniture had been smashed into shards, including the dining room table and a china cabinet. He began to see the same place Diane had described earlier-a ransacked jumble of smashed furnishings and decorations that had been decimated into junk.

Tripping over the television set, which looked as if it had been cleaved in half with an axe, he righted himself by grabbing onto the banister.

Slowly, his eyes rose up the long, winding staircase to the landing, where deep shadows lurked like waiting animals. All his boyhood fears of the dark-you know something waits for you in the shadows-returned as he started up the staircase. Suddenly, his mouth was dry and his heart seemed uncontrollable in his chest. His flesh was cold and dead with goose bumps. Wind whipped the roof and windows.

As he neared the top, the laughter came once more. But this time the tone of it was different, suggesting mourning rather than pleasure, a curious sobbing sound.

Tightening his grip on the banister, he went up the rest of the stairs, coming to the landing, which was filled with shadows, and letting himself be trapped inside them, like water that was over his head.

He pulled his service revolver from his shoulder holster. He was ready. He had no idea for what.

At the top of the stairs, he saw the outline of the hallway, and proceeded in that direction. Again, he had to be careful of where he walked because of the junk that had been strewn everywhere. The smell of human excrement — warm, oppressive-was in the air.

Two doors down, he heard the laughter once more. Thankful that he finally had a direction, he edged through the gloom of the hallway toward the noise.

Reaching the door, he pressed his ear to the wood, listening. Again, he thought of an orgy, for there were the sounds of moist sexual pleasure, of small sighs and groans of ecstasy, and, over all that, the laughter again. The mourning gone now, the laughter was lewd. He put his hand to the doorknob, turned.