Ed Gorman - Nightmare Child

Jeff McCay lay writhing on the hallway floor. Bent over him, his wife, Mindy, kept calling his name.

Robert Clark knelt down next to her to see if he could help the man. McCay seemed to be choking. His hands were at his throat, as if he were trying to dislodge a piece of trapped food.

Clark took the man's hands away. Jeff McCay looked up at him with startled, terrified eyes. Clark had seen this kind of panic many times before in 'Nam. A man was injured and all he wanted to know from the medic was, A m I going to live?

Gasping, grasping at air, thrashing about insanely, Jeff McCay looked over at his wife and started sobbing.

She leaned past Clark and took her husband in her arms.

"This is how it's been," Mindy said there in the darkness of the hall. "We know she's going to kill us because we killed her. But she punishes us. She almost made Jeff commit suicide the night he ran out of here naked. She puts spells on us, like this one where he seems to be choking to death. I had a period so bloody I had to sit in the bathtub, and twice my whole body broke out with sores. And you saw how she turns us into ghouls. That's why we could never have company-or go to the police — because every time we tried, she would do something to prevent us. All she's done since she came back is torture us."

Jeff continued to cry out and gasp in his wife's arms.

Downstairs, glass smashed in the living room.

"God, it's her!" Mindy cried, and grabbed Clark with one hand, her other holding her arm. "Please help us! Please!"

Clark got to his feet and pulled out his service revolver, already sensing that it was going to do him little if any good.

Even up there, the air was choked, fetid. He could smell the presence of a demon. A disbeliever, he'd once been called to a house where a demonic infestation had taken place. He'd remained skeptical but there was one thing he'd been unable to dismiss, and that was the peculiar and terrible odor of the place. He found himself feeling nauseated as he moved carefully down the hallway to the staircase.

Footsteps crunched into broken glass somewhere in the living room. Irregular breathing, almost wheezing, could be heard against the whistling sound of the wind.

Reaching the stairs, Clark put one hand on the banister for support and with the other raised his service revolver, ready for whatever lay ahead.

The entire house was a deep pool of shadows. He felt he was being submerged, perhaps even drowned, in them. One step at a time, he continued his descent to the first floor.

Creaking wood made him start. His entire body was instantly bathed in a sticky sweat. He'd had no idea how terrified he'd become.

Reaching the bottom of the steps, he began to scan the gloom, to see if he could find one thing wrong, one thing that would show him where Jenny might be.

Shapes of furniture, the fireplace, the heavy, closed drapes appeared. His stomach and bowels were doing terrible things as he pressed deeper into the room. This was not the kind of fear he liked to admit to himself. He felt impossibly young and helpless, as if at any moment he might drop his revolver and begin crying out for help.

A noise caused him to spin around, drop to one knee and aim his revolver.

Hammer back, ready to fire, he watched the alcove to the right of the dining room, and it was there that she appeared.

She was as he remembered her, an innocent-looking little girl with freckles and pigtails. Her prim blue dress touched her knees, and her white anklets and black patent leather shoes were perfectly cared for.

She moved toward him in the center of a soft blue glow. She put her hand out to him and smiled. "You're afraid, aren't you, Robert?"

And he heard himself-as if from a great distance-saying, "Yes, Jenny, I am."

"There's no reason to be. You're with the forces of good now."

"The forces of good?"

She raised her lovely eyes to the floor above them. "You saw what the forces of evil do to people. Now you'll be with me and everything will be all right."

"With you?" He wasn't sure what she meant. All he knew was that her voice had a peculiarly soothing effect on him, almost like a drug.

"Yes," she said, moving even closer, "with me."

She put a hand out, touched his face. He still knelt on one knee. The palm of her hand was tender and warm, comforting on his cheek.

She leaned forward and put her small, damp mouth in to kiss on his forehead.

"You'll be with me now," she said again.

And he thought of summer days and lush green foliage and clear blue mountain streams and cardinals and jays that frolicked on the soft clean air.

"With you," he repeated. "With you."

Distantly, he heard the revolver fall from his hand and strike the floor.

There in the darkness, enshrined in the soft blue glow, Jenny reached forward now, to give him an even more intimate kiss, one on the mouth.

Knowing this was wrong-she was a little girl-he tried to stop her but somehow he could not.

Feeling her tiny, wriggling tongue inside his mouth, he tried once again to push her away.

"Jenny, no," he said.

The cackle was unlike anything he had ever heard. And there could be no doubt from where it came.

Before his face, innocent little Jenny became the ugliest, bent hag he had ever seen. He thought of the mad women panhandlers of the large cities-this twisted crone was a hundred times uglier.

"You shouldn't play with little girls." The witch laughed, and then raked her long nails across his face, scoring it.

Hot blood and almost unbearable pain spread across his cheeks as he fell to the floor, cupping his hands over his face to slow the bleeding.

His scream followed her up the stairs, up into the even deeper shadows, where the McCay's waited to die.

It could have been no longer than a minute before their screams started, covering his entirely.

Several times, he tried to get to his feet, but each attempt ended with his falling back to the floor.

He was losing blood so quickly that his strength was leaving him. Terror, confusion, and a distant sense of shame also took their toll. He almost prayed for unconsciousness…

He was not certain when the front door was hurled open. All he knew was that the last thing he saw when he rose up once more on his bloody hands…was the sight of Diane.

She stood in the doorway shouting, "Jenny! Jenny!" Over and over, almost as if she was transfixed.

She did not seem to notice as he began dragging his body across the parquet floor toward her.

She did not seem to notice that his face looked as if a dozen razors had slashed it.

She did not seem to notice the soft, almost prayerful name-hers-he uttered as he now started to lose consciousness for sure…

No, she was too busy looking at what was left of the creature on the staircase, the creature that had once been a woman named Mindy.

Breasts no more than bloody holes, head torn off at the shoulders, and blood coming in geysers from the trunk, the creature grasped uselessly for the banister and then came tumbling down the stairway as, upstairs, Jeff began pleading for mercy and then pleading for help.

That was the last thing Clark remembered.

A robin sat on the window ledge. Diane, pouring milk into a clear, tall glass, said, "That's all you're going to eat?"

Patting her stomach, Jenny said, "Let's see. That's one egg, a bowl of oat bran, a piece of toast, a glass of orange juice, two vitamins, and now a big glass of milk." She grinned. "I'd say that's a pretty healthy breakfast."

Diane laughed. "You caught me at it again, didn't you?"

"Overcompensating," Jenny said decisively.

"Overcompensating," Diane agreed, and sat down. On a talk show they'd both seen together a few weeks before, the host had talked about how people overcompensated for things that worried them. In Diane's case, this meant overcompensating for all that had happened to Jenny. These days, Diane overprotected her shamelessly.