Night Things: A Novel of Supernatural Terror Read online

  “No, maybe it does,” Stephen said unexpectedly, and this time it was her turn to be surprised. She looked at him silently, waiting for him to continue.

  “The truth is, I’m not really used to kids. That’s probably why I forgot all about the telescope downstairs when you were dropping all those hints about it.” He turned to her beseechingly. “I told you when we got married I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to be a father. I’m sure that’s what Garrett is sensing. I can get up and perform in front of twenty thousand people, but when it comes to carrying on a conversation with an eleven-year-old I just don’t know what to say. Maybe just being up here and spending some time together will help.”

  “That’s what I told him,” she comforted. And then, seeing the brooding look in his eyes, she crossed the room and put her arms around him. “You know, I do have a certain amount of experience in these areas.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that I haven’t spent eleven years as a mother for nothing. If you like I can give you a few pointers.”

  “Like what?”

  “First, don’t worry about how to carry on a conversation with him. The key is just to get him started. That’s the first thing you have to know about talking to eleven-year-olds. Once you get them started, they’ll do all the rest.”

  “And how do I get him started?”

  “That’s easy,” she said. “Just ask him something about spaceships or extraterrestrials.”

  “Extraterrestrials?” he said, raising an eyebrow and grinning.

  She laughed and poked him in the ribs. “Yeah, just show him that you have even the slightest interest in anything weird or creepy and you’ll have him eating out of the palm of your hand.”

  “Well, I think I’ll practice on you,” he said as he returned the poke and then chased her back to the bed. She squealed, trying to get away, but he caught her and tried to pin her against the mattress. They wrestled around on the bed for several minutes, laughing and kissing, and then she lay in his arms, his astonishing clear green-gray eyes fixed on hers, and she was mesmerized by their uncanny depths. She shuddered with the thrill of being mastered by something or someone you couldn’t quite control, and wondered what she had done to deserve this magnificent man, about whom she still had so much to discover.

  After she finished unpacking, Lauren spent the rest of the afternoon opening windows and allowing the cool smell of the pines to disperse the mustiness of the house, and poking around in the refrigerators and the cupboards, taking inventory of the ample provisions Marty had laid in for them. However, she confined her wandering only to those rooms Stephen had already shown them, for despite her desire to know everything there was to know about this wonderful house, darkness came quickly to the forest and she reasoned it would be wiser for her to wait until they had electricity before embarking on further exploration.

  Finding that Marty had also seen to it that the gas stove was operable, she took some boneless chicken breasts out of the kitchen’s huge walk-in refrigerator and sauteed them in butter and wine. She also found a fresh loaf of French bread, the makings for a salad, and even a case of champagne, and by dinnertime she had not only prepared them all a meal fit for a king, but also filled the ruby-red dining room with enough candles to illuminate a cathedral.

  After she set the food on the table, she looked out the expanse of dining-room windows and again became transfixed by the awesome beauty of the place. In the last rays of the setting sun the formerly dark-blue waters of the lake had become a pointillist explosion of golds and vermilions, and a pair of loons swam near the shore. Their mournful cries echoed in the stillness of the twilight. With the coming of the cooler evening air a veil of mist started to rise off the water.

  Realizing that the food was going to get cold if she did not force herself out of her reverie, she called Stephen and Garrett down to dinner.

  “It certainly is beautiful out here at night,” she said, gazing out the window at the smattering of stars that had begun to flicker in the sky. She looked at Garrett, his face aglow in the lambent light of the candles. “What was it you were telling me the other day about why stars twinkle?”

  He kept his eyes trained on his plate as he pushed his fork into a piece of chicken. “They twinkle because of fluctuations in the earth’s atmosphere. If you looked at the same stars from outer space they wouldn’t twinkle at all.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  “At a lecture at the planetarium.”

  She blinked, impressed. Although the precocious range of his knowledge was a natural result of his curiosity and his love of books, some of the information he possessed still amazed her. She looked at Stephen and saw that he had also paid attention to what Garrett had said. “Garrett’s teachers say that he has quite an aptitude for science,” she informed him.

  Stephen looked at Garrett in an obviously interested way. “Your mother tells me you’ll make good use of that telescope.”

  “Yes, thanks. I really like it,” he said stiltedly.

  Stephen glanced at Lauren and took a deep breath. “So what was that book about you were reading earlier? UFOs?”

  Lauren smiled. With a motherly glance too subtle for anyone but a son to notice she prodded him on.

  “Yes, UFOs,” he returned.

  “So what’s the verdict?” Stephen continued. “Are spaceships from other planets really visiting the earth?”

  For the first time Garrett showed a hint of enthusiasm. “Of course they are. Thousands of people see them every year.” Stephen smiled. “You mean thousands of people see something every year. But can’t most of the things people see be explained away as weather balloons and things like that?” Garrett frowned, annoyed. Although he was aware of the notion that UFOs could be explained away as weather balloons and other prosaic objects, most of the books he had read tended to eschew such mundane explanations. To his mind such interpretations were irritatingly irrelevant. “They’re not weather balloons,” he groused. “I’ve got a book upstairs by a NASA scientist who goes around interviewing people who say they’ve seen UFOs, and he says that under hypnosis some of them can even remember having gone aboard flying saucers.”

  The impassioned conviction of his answer seemed to disconcert Stephen. It also somewhat embarrassed Lauren, although she still felt a flush of maternal pride at her son’s wide-ranging interests.

  Stephen pressed on, determined to maintain the conversation. “Well, if so many people are being taken aboard these things, why don’t we ever hear about them until after the fact? I mean, why doesn’t anyone ever witness the people being taken aboard the UFOs before the person starts to ramble on about it under hypnosis?”

  “Because the UFOs always choose such isolated places to come down,” Garrett returned confidently as he took another bite of chicken. “You know, uninhabited stretches of highway and mountaintops and stuff. Places where they won’t be seen.”

  Again Stephen looked as if either the self-assurance of Garrett’s delivery or the information itself caused him some discomfort. “If spaceships from other planets were visiting the earth, and if they were coming down in isolated places, I don’t know why anyone would be crazy enough to get aboard one.” He delivered the line with a certain amount of stiffness and to no one in particular as he took another gulp of champagne.

  Garrett looked at Stephen perplexedly. “Why would it be crazy to go aboard a UFO?”

  “Because if you were walking through the mountains and you came upon a spacecraft from another world just sitting there, how on earth would you have any idea what was waiting for you on the inside? You don’t know whether the creatures occupying it are going to be friendly or not. You don’t even know if the way they think is going to resemble the way we think. They might be so alien that concepts such as good and evil mean nothing to them. You may be no more than an insect to them, or worse, a microbe to be looked at under a microscope and then preserved in formaldehyde in some intergalactic natural histo
ry museum.”

  Garrett was genuinely surprised. His beliefs about beings from other planets had been forged primarily by recent movies, and it had simply never occurred to him that the inhabitants of UFOs might be anything untoward. In his mind they were all like E.T., shy, ancient, and benevolent. At the moment they seemed infinitely more congenial than the humanity across the table.

  Here was just the kind of thing that made him dislike his new stepfather. Stephen’s attempts to engage him in conversation were so transparent and patronizing. He obviously had no real interest in UFOs and was skeptical about their very existence. Garrett perceived in Stephen’s retorts a hint of the same subtle hostility he had sensed previously, and it suddenly occurred to him that this might be precisely the opportunity he had been looking for. He realized that if he could draw Stephen out, lure him into launching an even more overt attack, then his mother might see for herself once and for all what Stephen’s real feelings toward him were. He was racking his brain to determine what he might say to initiate this plan when his mother intervened.

  “Stephen, wouldn’t you at least be curious?”

  “If you came upon some sort of alien spacecraft sitting in the middle of nowhere, would you blunder inside?”

  “No, but—”

  “I would. I wouldn’t care what happened to me,” Garrett blurted out. The words came tumbling out of his mouth so quickly they surprised him almost as much as they seemed to surprise the adults. Although it had never really occurred to him before, his unhappiness over his mother’s marriage made him realize how much he longed to meet his own E.T., to have a magical, all-powerful friend who would both understand and protect him and perhaps even take him off to some better and more hospitable world. As soon as he uttered the words he felt hopeful he had stumbled upon the provocation he had been looking for, because the expression on Stephen’s face instantly became one of perturbed disbelief.

  For several seconds Garrett waited, but then, to his great disappointment, instead of attacking him Stephen simply shrugged his shoulders and settled back in his chair. At first Garrett felt thwarted, but then he looked at his mother and saw his reply had earned from her a look of unabashed horror.

  “What do you mean, you wouldn’t care what happened to you?” she challenged, and the distress in her voice confirmed for Garrett what he already knew, that his plan had backfired and he had managed to alarm her far more than annoy Stephen. Her continued stare told him that she really expected some sort of response, and this left him in a quandary. On the one hand he did not want to upset her further, but on the other, being forced to retract his statement in front of Stephen seemed equally disagreeable. Finally, forced into a corner, he opted for honesty.

  “I don’t,” he repeated softly as an uneasy silence fell over the room, and as if in response to the moment one of the candles suddenly sputtered, casting strange shadows on the wall.

  This confession filled Lauren with horror. It showed her how upset her son truly was. In addition, his interest in UFOs disturbed her more than she cared to admit. Perhaps it was more than just a childish fantasy. She realized that this was the first time she had encountered an example of her son’s thinking that so radically departed from her own. Whatever the reason, she had a problem on her hands, but she feared by pursuing the topic she would topple whatever headway Stephen and Garrett had made by talking together.

  She suppressed her own misgivings and pushed herself away from the table. “I think it’s time for dessert,” she said. She took a large Sacher torte from the sideboard and served them each a piece. She watched as they ate it, hoping the rich chocolate confection might dispel the somber mood, but conversation remained desultory. When they finished she tried a different approach.

  “You know, it’s an awfully pretty night out,” she said, looking out the window. “What do you say we all go out and sit on the veranda for a while?”

  The suggestion seemed to appall Garrett, but it was Stephen who spoke first. “Great idea, honey! But first I gotta make a call. When I talked to Marty today he told me that one of the junior execs at the record company okayed an ad design for a teen magazine without running it by me first. I promised Marty I’d call him back tonight so we could figure out what to do about it.”

  “But that won’t take long, will it?”

  He grinned sheepishly. “I hope not. But you know how Marty is.”

  Once the plan no longer included Stephen, Garrett became more amenable to Lauren’s suggestion, and after she finished cleaning up they went out onto the veranda to sit. To Lauren’s delight the night was now alive with the stridulations of insects and the cool mountain air was even more redolent with the smell of pines than before, but all of this seemed lost on Garrett. He remained as withdrawn as ever, so much so that by the time she tucked him in that night, leaving him to contend with the darkness of the house armed with no more than a First Alert flashlight, she had grown quite concerned.

  When she entered the master bedroom, her own flashlight clenched tightly in her hand, she saw Stephen had left only one large candelabrum burning on a nightstand and was already in bed.

  “So how did your phone call go?” she asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Did you get the ad withdrawn?”

  “No, I got the junior exec fired.”

  She looked at him with surprise. “Over one mistake? Isn’t that a bit drastic?”

  He smiled at her gently. “Honey, that’s the way the game is played. Part of the reason I’ve gotten where I am today is that I’ve controlled my image very carefully. The only way I can maintain that sort of control is to run a tight ship. I just can’t afford to allow slipups like that.” She understood his reasoning, but the severity of his action seemed a little extreme. Finally, realizing she had much more pressing concerns than worrying about the fate of the junior exec, she returned her attention to the matter at hand.

  “Stephen, I’m worried about Garrett,” she said as she slipped off her shoes.

  He rolled over in the sheets, his face half eclipsed in the circle of light cast by the candelabrum. “Why?”

  She clicked off the flashlight and started to unbutton her blouse.

  “I don’t know... after the way the evening ended I just felt a little funny leaving him all alone in a strange house without electricity.”

  “He’s not all alone.”

  “You know what I mean,” she said as she slipped out of her dress.

  Stephen snorted and then reached out to pull her into the bed. As he did so he pulled free from the sheets. The golden sheen of the candlelight on his naked and wellmuscled torso was arousing, but she avoided his grasp.

  He seemed to get the point and sat up in the bed. “Okay, so did Garrett say he was afraid?”

  “Nooo,” she drawled as she took off the last of her clothing and put on a light silk robe.

  “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that I’m not so sure he would tell me if he was afraid. He can be a very proud little boy. Sometimes its like trying to pry secrets out of the devil to get him to talk.”

  Stephen exhaled loudly. “So what do you suggest we do?”

  She looked at him, a trifle irritated, then suddenly it hit her that perhaps he had been more unnerved by what Garrett had said than she had realized. “Garrett’s little talk about getting aboard UFOs really got to you, didn’t it?”

  “Sort of,” he conceded. “Didn’t it bother you a bit?”

  “A bit, but it’s all part of being a little boy.”

  “I understand,” he said too quickly, and something in the tone of his voice seemed unconvincing. “Well, why did you get upset by what he said about UFOs?”

  The question intrigued her. In fact, she had been puzzling over its various and possible answers all night and had finally started to form an opinion about it. “I think it might be because of the time period I was raised in,” she said enigmatically.

  Her answer confused him. “What do y
ou mean?”

  “Well, you know, when we were growing up all the monsters and alien spacemen in the movies were bad. Now they’re all good guys. If you see a movie in which a kid meets something coming out of a spaceship, you know it’s going to be his best friend. I guess it’s just a different way of looking at things.”

  “But is it a good way of looking at things?” Stephen countered.

  Lauren gazed meditatively off into the distance, the cogs of her writer’s mind now turning. “I don’t know. At some level of the collective human psyche we seem to have decided it’s a good way of looking at things. At least that’s the attitude we’re allowing to surface in our modern myths, our movies. But is it a good way of looking at things? I mean, if we really were to learn that a flying saucer was approaching the earth, should we ignore the possibility it might be hostile and allow it to land without interference? Or should we deem that too great a risk to take and shoot first and ask questions later?”

  Stephen snorted. “Sounds safer to shoot first, I think.”

  “But what if it was friendly?” she asked. “What if it possessed the knowledge and wisdom to propel us light-years ahead in our evolution and welcoming it with open arms turned out to be the best decision we ever made?”

  “That’s a long shot.”

  “But how can you be so sure?”

  “They’ll probably be from the extraterrestrial equivalent of Hollywood, so by nature they’ll be aggressive.” He laughed.

  “Oh, Stephen!”

  “Oh, what?”

  She was just about to say something else when he reached for her again and this time managed to catch hold of her and pull her onto the massive canopied bed.

  “Stephen!” she objected with surprise, but before she could say anything else he had drawn up over her and was staring at her with such intensity she fell silent. She wanted to talk some more, but as she looked at the way the candlelight gleamed on his hair and the musculature of his shoulders she felt her resolve slipping away. An amused glint came into his eyes as he seemed to sense the power he had over her, and with one deft move he pushed her robe back over her shoulders. With mesmerizing grace he traced his finger down her neck and along the side of her breast as he started to kiss her, first gently, but then more roughly.