result of careful planning, rational thought, or even any conscious decision at all.
He had re-entered Apartment C41 of the Bedford Mills Apartments with every intention of staying there. After all, the whole bizarre incident was just a prank. Most of the police were packing up and leaving, while others argued with each other about why no one had thought to check the empty office building when men had been sent to canvass the neighborhood. The other inhabitants of the complex were drifting back, two or three at a time; some were standing around on the lawn discussing the day’s events, while others were returning to their apartments. A few of the first arrivals were already dressed and trying to back their cars out into the stream of police vehicles, presumably to go belatedly to their jobs and other engagements.
Smith had turned to close the door, and had seen Mrs. Malinoff coming up the stairs behind him, on her way to C42. She had smiled at him, a tight-lipped little smile.
He had seen her, but he had not heard her. Her knees were completely silent, even on the stairs.
And in the three months or so he had lived there, Mrs. Malinoff had never smiled at him. He had never seen her smile at anything, and certainly not at him.
And her eyes had seemed to glow red for an instant, like eyes in a badly-angled flash picture.
Smith nodded politely to her, closed the door, and headed toward the bedroom.
The air in the apartment was still stifling hot. The bedroom window was still open, but the outside air, which was now noticeably cooler than the air inside, seemed reluctant to enter.
Mrs. Malinoff’s knees hadn’t creaked.
Maybe, Smith tried to tell himself as he crossed to his bedroom closet, the unusual exertions of the morning had loosened up her joints.
Her eyes had gleamed red.
Sometimes eyes gleamed red in flash photos when the bright light reflected directly off the retina, at the back of the eye. Maybe Mrs. Malinoff’s eyes had caught a stray bit of sunlight somehow to produce the same effect.
Except that it had happened in the windowless fourth-floor stairwell, under a skylight crusted over grime, and the only electric light had been behind her.
He pulled out his suitcase without thinking about it, and threw it open on the bed.
She had smiled at him.
She hadn’t shown her teeth, though, and with a glance at the window screen he had this sudden mental image of Mrs. Malinoff grinning broadly, showing dozens of silver-grey needle teeth like the thing in his nightmare, and then he was grabbing for his shirts and stuffing them into the suitcase, and he knew that he was not going to stay the night in that apartment again, no matter whether the air conditioner was fixed or not, not even if they gave him the place rent-free.
The Red Roof Inn was the closest motel, since there were none at all in Diamond Park itself, so that was where he went. There were at least half a dozen others in Gaithersburg, and more in Germantown, but the Red Roof Inn was the closest.
He threw his suitcase in the back seat of his Chevy and went, his hands tight on the steering wheel as he waited his turn to exit the parking lot, tight on the wheel as he drove up Barrett Road to Route 117, east on 117 to 124, left on 124, past the Shell station and then right into the parking lot of the motel.
In the motel office he stared closely at the clerk, studying his eyes to be sure they didn’t gleam red, trying to see his teeth to be sure they were white and blunt.
The clerk was perfectly ordinary, a bored young man with sandy brown hair, clearly uncomfortable, despite the air conditioning, in the bright red jacket with the motel chain’s logo on it. His teeth were white; his eyes were green, or maybe hazel. Smith took the key to Room 203 without comment.
Once safely in his room he threw his suitcase on the bed, hesitated, and then, feeling slightly foolish, checked the place over carefully, making sure the window was locked and the grilles securely bolted down on the heating/cooling vents.
Then he went back downstairs and crossed the parking lot to the Denny’s Restaurant next door, to finally get himself a cup of coffee, something he never had gotten that morning, and while he was at it he would get something to eat to quiet his empty stomach.
7.
That night he turned off David Letterman, turned out the light, and lay back on the bed, telling himself he should get some sleep.
Telling himself that did not make it so, however; he was still too nervous to sleep, particularly in a strange bed. After a few minutes of staring at the ceiling, on a sudden impulse he turned and looked toward the window.
His breath caught in his throat, and he felt himself choking, strangling, as his eyes widened so far that they stung.
That creature, that nightmare person, was peering in the window at him. The red eyes gleamed, and the silvery teeth sparkled a duller red in the glow from the motel sign.
And behind it he could see other faces, human faces, familiar faces.
Mrs. Malinoff. Nora Hagarty. Walt Harris, from C31, who complained whenever he played loud music.
Mrs. Malinoff was leaning over the nightmare thing’s shoulder, and as he watched, frozen, unable to breathe, she reached up with both hands and began peeling her upper lip back.
The skin of her face slid up, across her cheeks and over her nose, peeling back like a rubber mask and revealing greyish flesh and gleaming silver needle-teeth beneath, eyes a baleful red.
On the other side Nora Hagarty was tugging at her ears, as if to loosen them; then she, too, reached for her upper lip.
As Mrs. Malinoff’s face came away, revealing completely the horror beneath, his breath came free, his throat opened, and he began to scream.
He screamed wordlessly, raw sound pouring out.
The red eyes blinked in unison, both pairs of them; Nora Hagarty’s hands froze where they were, her lip peeled back ludicrously to the tip of her nose. Walt Harris ducked down out of sight, vanishing completely.
Slowly, reluctantly, Nora’s hands pulled the skin of her face back into place, and she, too, dropped out of sight.
The thing that had been Mrs. Malinoff tugged her skin back down over the sparse black hair of its head, back across forehead, eyes, and nose, resuming its human appearance, and then it, too, disappeared.
The last one, the undisguised nightmare face, frowned at him. There was something horribly familiar about the gesture. It raised a long-fingered hand in a parting salute, just as it had before, and then it was gone.
He stopped screaming and caught his breath, gasping, taking deep, ragged gulps of the room’s artificially cool air.
Someone pounded on the door. “Mr. Smith? Are you all right in there?”
“I’m fine,” he gasped, recognizing the motel clerk’s voice, “I’m fine. I just had a nightmare.” He gathered what little remained of his composure, and said, “I’m sorry if I disturbed anyone.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the clerk asked, “Could you open the door, please, sir, and let
