She could hear the flutter of wings under her bed as the birds flapped their excitement.
Susan left the room, stepping over the spilled brandy, the smashed decanter, the body, and went downstairs. She stepped out into the rain.
There Edwin was waiting for her. He was a little boy, but he looked so grown up, she felt so proud of him. He was a little boy, trying to look big before his time. He was a creature of scales and horns and misshapen flesh.
She took him by the hand. And, as the dream had promised, she made the rain stop. Or maybe it rained, but she just didn’t feel it any more.
Susan looked down at her hand in his, and saw that it was dripping with blood. She saw that Edwin’s hand was sticky with blood too.
And slowly, they walked into town.
Steve Rasnic Tem
THE NIGHT DOCTOR
STEVE RASNIC TEM’s most recent novel, Blood Kin—a Southern Gothic/horror blend of snake-handling, ghosts, granny women, kudzu and Melungeons—won the Bram Stoker Award in 2014. PS Publishing recently released his novella In the Lovecraft Museum, and Centipede Press has scheduled Out of the Dark: A Storybook of Horrors—225,000 words of the best of his uncollected horror tales.
Early in 2017 Solaris will publish his new novel Ubo, a dark SF meditation on violence as seen through the eyes of some of history’s most dangerous figures.
“For me, some of the most compelling horror fiction both to read and write are stories in which all the fear in the story becomes embodied in a central figure,” Tem reveals. “I envy those writers who seem to be able to create a new monster (for lack of a better term) whenever needed. It’s never worked that way for me. I find I can’t force such creations to appear—when I do they seem unconvincing and arbitrary. The good ones never make themselves known simply to fill a need in the narrative—so you won’t find that many such creatures in my oeuvre.
“‘The Night Doctor’ came to me one afternoon while I was half-dozing in my reading chair, meditating on some rather serious life issues. I fell asleep, and when I woke up he was standing there in the corner, gazing at me. The story he was part of came to me immediately.
“The real work was sharpening that image, getting the details right, getting closer to that thing I never wanted to get close to.”
ELAINE SAID THE walk would be good for them both. “We don’t get enough meaningful exercise these days. Besides, we might meet some of the new neighbours.” Sam couldn’t really argue with that, but he couldn’t bring himself to agree, so he nodded, grunted. Although his arthritis was worse than ever, as if his limbs were grinding themselves into immobility, it hurt whether he moved them or not, so why not move?
He would have preferred waiting until they were more comfortable in the neighbourhood—they’d been there less than a week. Until he had seen a few friendly faces, until he could be sure of their intentions. People here kept their curtains open most of the time. He supposed that was meant to convince passers-by of their trusting nature, but he didn’t like it. Someday you might see something you didn’t want to see. You might misinterpret something. Since they’d moved in he’d glanced into those other windows from time to time—and seen shiny spots back in the darkness, floating lights with no apparent source, oddly shaped shadows he could not quite identify and didn’t want to think about. He was quite happy not knowing the worst about other people’s lives. He could barely tolerate the worst about his own.
Not that he had justification for much complaint. He’d always known the worst was somewhere just out of reach, so it shouldn’t have affected him. Like most people, he supposed. Human beings had a natural sense for it, the worst that was just beyond the limits of their own lives. The worst that was still to come.
What with one minor annoyance or another—finding pants that didn’t make him look fat, determining what pair of shoes might hurt his feet the least, deciding on the correct degree of layering that wouldn’t make him wish he’d worn something else as the day wore on—they didn’t leave the new house until almost 11:00. Sam worried about getting his lunch on time. If he didn’t get his lunch on time his body felt off the rest of the day.
“I’ll buy you some crackers at the drug store if you need them,” she said. “Don’t fret about it.”
“Crackers? What kind of meal is that? You’re always saying I should eat healthier.”
“For heaven’s sake, Sam, let it go. Crackers to tide you over. Wheat, something like that. A lot of small meals are better for you anyway. That’s the way the cave people ate—they grazed all the time.”
“Cave people,” he repeated, as if reading some absurd road sign. He didn’t say anything more. He didn’t want to whine like Bryan, thirty-four years old and he still whined like a little boy. They’d done something terribly wrong for Bryan to be that way, but Sam still had no idea what it was. Parenting was a mystery, like diet, like exercise, like how to still keep feeling good about yourself in this world.
Sam felt uncomfortable most of the time. Physically, certainly. And as much as it annoyed him to think about it, emotionally as well. A walking mass of illogic, and that was no way to be.
After they left the house they turned onto the long lane that meandered through the neighbourhood. When he realised how long the street was, and how far away they were from the tiny mall—not so bad if you were driving, but Sam had stopped driving two years ago—he felt on the verge of tears. Just like some kind of toddler. Humiliating.
As they were starting out a large black bird landed in the street beside him. It threw its head back, shuddering, something struggling in its mouth. Sam glanced at his wife to see if she had noticed this. But her eyes were fixed forward, and he decided not to mention it. He twisted his head around to look at the bird. Still there. Was it a crow? It looked too big to be a blackbird. In fact it might be the biggest bird he’d ever seen up close. Its beak was so sharp. It could take your eyes out and there was nothing you could do about it, it would happen so quickly. Just like they were grapes.
His knees were hurting already. There were tears in his eyes, but at least they weren’t yet running down his cheeks. Birds didn’t cry. He should be like the birds.
He wasn’t sure how it had come to this—he’d always been such an optimist. And he’d always been healthy—no, it was too late in life to exaggerate, relatively healthy. But relatively healthy still meant you could drop dead at any time. So he walked around sore much of the time, each step like a needle in his heels and a crumbling in his knees, and attempted to think about everything but death.
They passed another older couple. Elaine would have said “elderly” but Sam hated that word. Elaine smiled at them and said hello. The couple nodded and said hello back. They had already passed the couple when Sam managed to speak his delayed “nice day!” The man said “oh, yes,” awkwardly turning his head to Sam in order to be polite, but staggering a little, almost falling off the kerb. Sam could feel the warmth flooding his face. He’d caused that distraction, and the resulting stumble.
“We should have introduced ourselves,” Elaine said a few minutes later. “They may have been neighbours.” Sam hoped the couple didn’t recognise him the next time they met. “Sam, did you hear me?”
“Of course I heard you, you’re right here.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know it needed answering, I guess.”