Authors: Richard Laymon
Tags: #Horror, #Fiction, #Short Stories & Fiction Anthologies
Endless Night
Table of Contents
Other Leisure books by Richard Laymon:
Part One - Someone in the House
Part Three - Witness Protection
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—
New York Review of Science Fiction
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—Dean Koontz
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—
Sunday Express
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MORE PRAISE FOR RICHARD LAYMON!
“One of horror’s rarest talents.”
—Publishers Weekly
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—Horror World
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—
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“Laymon is unique. A phenomenon. A genius of the grisly and the grotesque.”
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—Cemetery Dance
Other
Leisure
books by Richard Laymon:
(anthology)
LEISURE
BOOKS
®
July 2004
Published by
Dorchester Publishing Co., Inc.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10016
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
Copyright
©
1993 by Richard Laymon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law.
ISBN 0-8439-5184-2
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Printed in the United States of America.
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.
This book is dedicated to our friends:
Larry Mori & Joan Parsons,
Curators of the Mori-Parsons Museum
of the Weird and Wonderful
where they dwell
Part One
Someone in the House
Chapter One
Jody came awake moaning.
“Wake up!” The whisper sounded urgent. “Jody, wake up! Please!”
The voice belonged to Evelyn. Probably so did the hand shaking her shoulder.
She thought, Oh, yeah. I’m at Evelyn’s. Sleeping over. Trying to sleep over, more like it.
She opened her eyes, rubbed them, yawned. The room was dark, but she could see Evelyn looking down at her from the bed. The girl’s face was a dim blur smudged with shadows. Her arm, darker than the white sheets, was stretched toward the floor where Jody had settled for the night in her sleeping bag. Her hand had a tight grip on Jody’s shoulder.
Jody moaned again. “What is it this time?”
“I heard something.”
“Gimme a break,” she murmured. “You messed up a really neat dream. I wanna get back to it, if you don’t mind. Jeez.” As she yawned, Evelyn shook her shoulder again.
“I mean it. I’m not kidding. I
heard
something.”
“So?”
“I’m scared.”
So what else is new? Jody thought. She didn’t say it, though. Evelyn had a way of blowing just about everything out of proportion, making big deals out of nothing—but she was Jody’s best friend. They’d been best friends since kindergarten, so Jody’d had about ten years of experience with her histhonics.
“It probably wasn’t anything. Just go back to sleep.”
“It was somebody breaking one of the windows downstairs.”
“Uh.” Jody yawned again. Now that she’d been awakened, she felt too hot inside her sleeping bag. Had Evelyn’s father shut off the air conditioner before turning in? “Breaking glass?” she asked. “Maybe one of your parents is up and dropped something. What time is it, anyway?”
“One-fifteen.”
“Jeez.” She found the inside zipper tab up near her left shoulder. The hand on her other shoulder flinched when she slid the zipper down. “That was just me,” she explained.
“What’re you doing!”
“Melting.”
“We’ve gotta do something.”
“Yeah. Let’s go back to sleep.” She swept aside the stifling thickness of her sleeping bag. From the knees down, it still buried her. She freed her legs and stretched out, uncovered. That felt better, cool and nice except where her nightshirt kept the air away. If she were at home, she could simply take it off. Not here, though. “Does your dad turn off the air conditioning at night?”
“My God, Jody.”
“Can we open a window, or something?”
“They don’t open.”
Remind me never to live in a state-of-the-art house, she thought. “That’s probably why somebody broke one.”
“I don’t find any of this amusing.”
Jody felt her nightshirt glide up her body, giving her a momentary, soft caress as she raised her arms and folded her hands beneath her head. Now, she could feel the air’s touch higher on her thighs. She eased one leg sideways.
A lot better.
Just gotta get back inside the sleeping bag before daylight. Wouldn’t want either of the guys to see me like this. God, that’d be embarrassing. I’d never be able to look Mr. Clark—Charles—in the eye again. It’d be even worse if Andy got a look. A lot worse. Him and his major-league crush. The poor tyke might throw a heart attack, be the first twelve-year-old in history to drop dead from over-excitement
.
“Do you think we oughta take a look around?” Evelyn asked.
“All you heard was a little breaking glass?”
“Yeah.”
“That could’ve been anything. It probably came from outside. Maybe somebody dropped a bottle.”
“What if it’s a robber?”
“If it’s a robber, I don’t think he would appreciate a visit from us.”
“Ha ha.”
“Anyway, the burglar alarm would’ve gone off.”
“Maybe not.”
“Your dad
always
sets it before he goes to bed.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“My God, Ev, every time your folks turn in before us, your dad
always
warns us not to touch any of the doors. Or does he only do that when
I
’m staying over? Does he think I’m a bad influence and’ll talk you into sneaking out to get wild?”
“No. He thinks you’re great.”
“Very perceptive man.”
“But the alarm doesn’t
have
to go off, you know? Not even if it is set. Criminals have ways ...”
“Sure. Real pros do. But pros try not to go busting into houses when people are in them. They like to go in when nobody’s home. For one thing, it’s less of a hassle. For another, it’s a much lighter sentence if they get caught. It’s only burglary, if nobody’s home. Boosts it up to robbery if anyone’s there,
anned
robbery if the bad guy has any kind of a weapon. That’s what Dad says.”
“He always carries a gun, doesn’t he?”
“Most of the time.”
“I sure wish he was here right now.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ev. If you’re this worried, maybe we’d better take a look around. Or maybe you’d rather dispense with the preliminaries and just dial 911.”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Oh, your parents would love that. Look, why don’t we go and wake up your dad?”
“Sure. He’d kill me.”
“Not if there’s a bad guy in the house.”
“But what if there isn’t? What if I wake him up, and it’s all a false alarm?”
“You woke me up.”
“That’s different.”
“Yeah, it’s okay to wake me up.”
Evelyn was silent for a few moments. Then she said, “Maybe I’d better.”
“Better what?”
“Tell Dad.”
For the first time, Jody felt a slight tremor of worry. Even though Evelyn’s father seemed like a really nice guy, the poor girl had always shown major reluctance to disturb him. If she was ready to wake him up, she
must
be seriously concerned about the noise she’d heard.