Charles De Lint - Dreams Underfoot

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 unsettled 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 monsters 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 illfitting 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.

They’re freaks ....

Crazy things.

They live on the fire that makes us human.

Words that seemed to well up out of some great pain he was carrying around inside him.

They’re not human ... they just look like us ....

A thump on her balcony had her jumping nervously out of her chair until she realized that it was just the paperboy tossing up today’s newspaper. She didn’t want to look at what The Daily Journal had to say, but couldn’t seem to stop herself from going out to get it. She took the paper back inside and spread it out on her lap.

Naturally enough, the story had made the front page. There was a picture of her, looking washed out and stunned. A shot of the corpse being taking away in a body bag. A head and shoulders shot of Nicky

...

She stopped, her pulse doubling its tempo as the headline under Nicky’s picture sank in.

“KILLER FOUND DEAD IN CELLPOLICE BAFFLED.”

“No,” she said.

They know about me.

She pushed the paper away from her until it fell to the floor. But Nicky’s picture continued to look up at her from where the paper lay.

They’ve been hunting me.

None of what he’d told her could be true. It had just been the pitiful ravings of a very disturbed man.

I wouldn’t last the night in a cell. The freaks’d be on me so fast ...

But she’d known him once—a long time ago—and he’d been as normal as anybody then. Still, people changed ....

She picked up the paper and quickly scanned the story, looking for a reasonable explanation to put to rest the irrational fears that were reawakening her panic. But the police knew nothing. Nobody knew a thing.

“I suppose that at this point, only Nicky Straw knows what really happened,” the police spokesman was quoted as saying.

Nicky and you, a small worried voice said in the back of Luann’s mind.

She shook her head, unwilling to accept it.

They’re drawn to the ones whose fires burn the brightest.

She looked to her window. Beyond its smudged panes, the night was gathering. Soon it would be dark. Soon it would be night. Light showed a long way in the dark; a bright light would show further.

The ones whose fires burn the brightest ... like yours does.

“It ... it wasn’t true,” she said, her voice ringing hollowly in the room. “None of it. Tell me it wasn’t true, Nicky.”

But Nicky was dead.

She let the paper fall again and rose to her feet, drifting across the room to the window like a ghost.

She just didn’t seem to feel connected to anything anymore.

It seemed oddly quiet on the street below. Less traffic than usual—both vehicular and pedestrian.

There was a figure standing in front of the bookstore across the street, back to the window display, leaning against the glass. He seemed to be looking up at her window, but it was hard to tell because the brim of his hat cast a shadow on his face.

Once they’re on to you, you can’t shake them.

That man in the park. His face. Shifting. The skin seeming too loose.

They’ll keep after you until they bleed you dry.

It wasn’t real.

She turned from the window and shivered, hugging her arms around herself as she remembered what Nicky had said when he’d left the apartment last night.

What if I’m right?

She couldn’t accept that. She looked back across the street, but the figure was gone. She listened for a footstep on the narrow, winding stairwell that led up to her balcony. Waited for the movement of a shadow across the window.