Nursery Tale (23 page)

She put her hand on her abdomen. No strenuous packing, though. Nothing heavy. She was convinced that was why Jodie had been born prematurely, because she'd done too much hard physical work the day before. The doctor had said she was wrong, but then the doctor had said other things too: "Jodie's the picture of health, Mrs. McIntyre," was one of the things he'd said. Damn him to hell!

She stood quietly for a minute to let her sudden anger cool. She was in the kitchen, and bad made a full pot of coffee. She decided now that she didn't want any of it.

She unplugged the pot.

She left the kitchen.

She'd pack the baby's things first, she decided, and she started up the stairs.

D
ick Wentis threw open the door to his son's room. He raised the fireplace poker high above his head ("What do you need
that
for, Dick?" . . . "It's just a precaution, Trudy.").

But except for the bed and the dresser, a lamp, and some nondescript posters on one wall, the room was empty.

"It looks empty," Dick whispered.

Trudy shouldered herself up next to him in the doorway. "What about the bathroom, Dick?"

He looked to the left, toward the adjoining bathroom. The door was closed. "I don't know," he said.

She stuck her head into the bedroom. "I always keep that door open," she said. "Otherwise it gets stuffy in there."

Dick said nothing. He coaxed her into the hallway, stepped into the room, and turned toward the bathroom. Trudy said from the hallway, "
Sam
might be in there, Dick."

He glanced at her; she was smiling tentatively. "It's somebody, Dick. Who's to say it's not Sam?" The tentative smile flickered on and off, as if it were a nervous twitch.

"You had the front door
locked
, Trudy."

"Sam has a key, Dick." She paused, glanced at the floor; the nervous smile became stuck on her face, like a grimace. "A key," she repeated.

A moment later, she shot through the doorway, pushed past her husband, and pulled the bathroom door open. "Sam—" she yelled, as if in an ecstatic greeting.

But the bathroom was empty.

She felt Dick's hands on her shoulders. He whispered to her, "The attic, Trudy. Whoever it is in the attic, I can hear him." He led her to Sam's bed, sat her on it, went to the door. "I'm going to go have a look," he told her.

She said, standing, "Yes, I'll come with you."

L
arry Meade didn't know what he was seeing at first. He was reminded of the time, twenty years before, when a family pet had dragged itself home after being hit by a car, had managed to pull the kitchen screen door open, and had pulled itself across the floor, leaving an irregular trail of blood on the old linoleum. He had found the animal dead on the cellar stairs.

That is what he thought of now, seeing the thin, ragged trail of blood that led from the kitchen, to the hallway, and then—in little fits and starts on the thick rug—up the stairs to the second floor.

He thought, cursing himself, even as he thought it,
Jesus, Dora's had her damned period!

He heard her voice from upstairs; "Who are you?" it said.

"Dora?" he called. "What's wrong?"

"Who are you?" the voice repeated. "What do you want?"

He noticed for the first time that it was getting dark in the house. He reached for the light switch at the bottom of the stairs and called again, as he flicked it on, "Dora?"

The house stayed dark.

"Damn it!" he whispered. "Are you okay, Dora?" he called. "Dora, they've found Timmy. Some guy in a Jeep out on Reynolds Road found him." He waited. He heard giggling.

He leaned over and fingered some of the blood on the stairs; it was just starting to coagulate. He straightened. "Dora, is somebody up there with you?"

"What do you want?" he heard again.

He started up the stairs. "Dora?"

And that is when they appeared. At the top of the stairs. Instantly. As if they had been there all along and the rapid change in the light had finally revealed them. Two boys. Three girls. Naked, blank-faced, blue-eyed, dark-haired. And each so exquisitely, so perfectly, and so impossibly beautiful that Larry gasped upon seeing them:

He stumbled backward, groping for the knob on the front door. He found it and threw the door open.

D
earest Norm
. Marge Gellis crossed it out furiously.

Dear Norm
. She crossed that out, too.

She realized suddenly that she hadn't yet decided exactly how she was going to do it, what she had to do, and that was very important, because she wanted no pain. Only a slow and peaceful separation. Something pleasant.

Norm,

You won't understand. I won't even ask you to understand.

She crossed it out. She reached to her right to turn on the desk side lamp. The lamp wouldn't work. Mechanically, out of habit, she jiggled it a little. The bulb flickered briefly, then lit.

W
hen he was a young man, Dick Wentis put in several years as an insulation contractor. It hadn't worked out because his business sense was on a much lower level than his ambition, but the work had helped him to overcome a weak feeling of claustrophobia, because he had to make his way through attics which, in new homes, sometimes allowed no more than two or three feet of clearance between ceiling and floor.

He thought of those years now as he positioned a stepladder under the attic access panel in the closet of the master bedroom. He said to Trudy, as he climbed the stepladder, "It has to be an animal. Maybe it got in through the roof vents, I don't know." He seemed irritated. He put his hands on the panel; he pushed hard. "Damn it!" he breathed.

"What's the matter?" Trudy asked; she was holding the stepladder.

"It's stuck," he answered. He took his hands from the panel. "This is fucking stupid!" he said. "No," Trudy said. "It isn't."

He glanced questioningly at her.

"Sam's gone up there before," she told him quietly. "A couple times. I don't know, I guess it's like a fort or something—" She stopped; she was making foolish excuses for him, she realized. Excuses Dick could not possibly accept.

"You never told me," he said.

"I didn't know what your reaction would be, Dick."

He exhaled, "We'll talk about it later." Then, abruptly, he put his hands on the panel once more. He pushed. The panel gave easily. He slid it to one side. Bits of gray, cellulose insulation drifted onto his hair and shoulders. Some got into his right eye and he rubbed the eye angrily.

He took another step up the ladder and stuck his head into the dark attic. He waited a moment; then, "I'll need a light, Trudy."

"Can you see anything?"

"No, that's why I need the light."

"Dick, this is stupid, like you said. How
could
he have gotten up there without me knowing? And besides, that stuff, that insulation, would be all over the closet. Maybe we should both go looking for him outside again, Dick—"

He turned his head sharply to look at her, his facial muscles tight. "I can hear him, Trudy, I can hear him breathing."

"My God!"

"Please get me the light.
Now!
"

She went hurriedly into the bedroom, unplugged one of the bedside lamps. "Dick," she called, "this cord's not going to be long enough."

He called back, "There are a couple of extension cords in the kitchen. Get me the longest one you can find."

"Yes," she said, and she set the lamp down and left the room.

Dick stuck his head into the attic again. He listened.

The breathing (if that's what it was, he thought; because it could just as easily have been the roof moving slightly in the wind, or snow being pushed into the vents) seemed to come from several different directions, depending on which way he moved his head. And it seemed very shallow and rapid, as if whoever was up there was not only out of breath, but was trying bard to hide himself, too.

"Sam?" He kept his voice low and soothing. "It's me. Your father. Are you up here, Sam?" He listened. The breathing seemed to alter pitch slightly. He smiled. "Sam, please come down out of there. We're worried sick about you."

The breathing stopped.

"Sam?" He heard low scuffling noises far to his right, near the attic's east wall. "Sam? Is that you? Please, Sam, don't be afraid." He listened.

He heard the breathing again, but to his left. And it was very close.

He turned his head. He squinted into the darkness. He said very tentatively—because he wasn't sure what he was seeing, or if he was seeing anything at all—"Sam? Is that you?"

Trudy, taking him by surprise, said from behind him, "Here's the lamp, Dick."

He felt heat near his thigh; he turned his head. Trudy was handing the lamp to him, minus its shade. "The extension cord should be long enough, Dick. Be careful up there. Please."

He reached for the lamp. 'Trudy, he's here. Sam's here. I know it." He looked quizzically at her. "What's wrong, Trudy?" Her mouth had dropped open slightly; her eyes had widened. "Trudy?" He saw that she was looking at something behind him, in the access hole.

He looked. "Holy Mother of Jesus!" he hissed, and felt himself falling backward from the stepladder. He threw his arms wide.

Trudy screamed.

And Sam Wentis, naked, a look of stark and awful confusion about him, his face and body riddled with small, ugly, dark brown splotches—like a dying plant—leaped from the access hole to the floor of the closet.

Dick, still falling, tried to cushion himself with his arms and hands, but the closet was too cramped, and his fall too uncontrolled. He hit the floor first with his back, his left arm slipped beneath him, twisted, broke at the elbow; then his forehead slammed into the doorframe. He made a small, dry hacking noise—all he could manage through the enormous, sudden pain—then passed into unconsciousness.

And, while Trudy continued to scream shrilly, in agony for the thing which had once been her adoptive son, Sam Wentis fled the room and was gone.

L
arry Meade turned the car radio on, listened for a moment to a Paul Simon oldie, turned it off. It was good, he thought suddenly, that Timmy had gotten out of Granada. There was no real need for him to stay.

The car's four doors were locked; he had thrown the garage door open for ventilation, and so the garage was dusted everywhere with snow, though lightly, because the winds were from the north, and the garage faced east. He could see nothing through the thin layer of snow on the car's windows.

A half hour earlier, when he had stumbled into the garage, he had figured out that if he ran the engine just ten or fifteen minutes an hour, for the heat, then he had a good five or six hours left.

But everything had changed, since then. Slowly, but immutably, everything had changed.

Because his understanding had changed. Profoundly.

Because, when he had seen the children at the tree line, he had caught a fleeting and inner glimpse of what they were, and of what they were capable of. And that glimpse—brief as it had been—had frightened him more than he had ever been frightened, the cold, nervous fear that is caused by ignorance. A fear which had, in the last hour, given way to knowledge.

He wanted desperately to tell someone what he knew, what he understood, so they would understand, too. Dick Wentis, maybe. Or Trudy. Someone. "I've seen them, and I know what they are!" But he couldn't really say what they were, he realized. Only that they were of the earth. That they had a purpose. And that they needed him.

He put his head down so his forehead rested against the top of the steering wheel. He whispered, "I'm sorry." He didn't know precisely to whom he was whispering it—to his wife, perhaps, whom he'd abandoned. Or maybe to himself—to the civilized man cringing deep inside him in stark fear of what he was going to do in the next few seconds.

He put his hand on the door handle. He gripped it hard. The civilized man inside him screamed,
What are you doing?! What are you doing?! You've got to fight them!
And, smiling benignly, he answered himself,
I've fought them all my life. I'm done fighting them.

And with one quick, smooth motion he opened the door and stepped out of the car.

His peripheral vision showed him that the children were waiting. He turned his head; he looked at them; he saw the great hunger, and the overwhelming need in their eyes.

And he realized at once, and almost joyfully, that they were stronger, and better, than him.

He inhaled very deeply; he felt the cold air moving into his lungs; he imagined that he could feel his lungs swelling in response.

It was the last work his lungs ever did. The children were on him in a second, and they brought death to him as quickly and as mercifully as they had to Dora.