Night Freight (24 page)

Something cool touches my face.
I'm
not alone in the room anymore.

The bastard with the scythe is here.

But I won't look at him. I won't look at the dark of his clothes and the dark under his hood. I'll look at the light instead . . . up there on the ceiling, the big fluorescent tubes shining down, light shining down, look at the light, reach for the light, the light . . .

And the door opens, I hear it open, and from a long way off I hear Lila's voice say, "I couldn't stay away, Danny, I had to see you, I had to come—"

The dark!

A major social problem of our times is the stuff of this mordant little tale. The central premise strikes me as all too possible; if something like it hasn't happened yet, I for one won't be surprised to pick up my morning newspaper one day soon and find an account of a similar occurrence. It should probably be noted that my personal sympathies here are about equally divided between Rennert and Dain and their real-life counterparts. Victims both, victims all.

R
ennert unlocked the door to his apartment, thinking that it was good to be home. It had been a long day at the office and he was eager for a dry martini and a quiet dinner. He walked in, shut and relatched the door. The hall, five steps long, led into the living room; when he reached the end of it he stopped suddenly and stood gawping.

A man was sitting on his couch.

Just sitting there, completely at ease, one leg crossed over the other. Middle-aged, nondescript, wearing shabby clothing. And thin, so thin you could see the bones of his skull beneath sparse brown hair and a papery layer of skin and flesh.

It took Rennert a few seconds to recover from his shock. Then he demanded, "Who the hell are you?"

"My name is Dain. Raymond Dain."

"What're you doing in my apartment?"

"Waiting for you."

"For Christ's sake," Rennert said. "I don't know you. I've never seen you before in my life." Which wasn't quite true. There was something vaguely familiar about the man. "How did you get in here?"

"The same way you just came in."

"The door was locked. I locked it this morning—"

"I'm good with locks."

A thread of fear had begun to unwind in Rennert. He was a quiet, timid man who took pains to avoid any potentially dangerous situation. He had no experience with anything like this; he didn't know how to handle it.

"What's the idea?" he said. "What do you want?" Dan was looking around the room. "This is a nice apartment. Really nice."

"I asked what you want."

"Comfortable. Warm. Everything in good taste."

"None of the furnishings is worth stealing," Rennert said. "There's nothing here worth stealing—you must know that by now. I have twenty dollars in my wallet and about two hundred in my checking account. I work for an insurance company, my salary isn't—"

"I'm not after your money, Mr. Rennert."

". . . So you know my name."

"From the mailbox downstairs."

"If you're not a thief, then what are you?"

"A salesman. That is, I used to be a salesman. Sporting goods. At one time I was the company's top man in California."

"I don't—

"But then one of the bigger outfits bought us out and right away they began downsizing. They said my salary was too high and my commissions too low, so I was one of the first to be booted out."

"I'm sorry to hear that, but—"

"I couldn't get another job," Dain said. "Everywhere I went they said I was too old. Eventually I lost everything. My wife and I had been living high and on the edge and it didn't take long, less than a year. House, car, all my possessions of any value—everything went. Then my wife went too. I ended up with nothing."

Rennert couldn't think of anything to say. He felt as though he'd walked into the middle of somebody else's nightmare.

"You can't imagine how bad it was," Dain said. "The first year I tried twice to do away with myself. But gradually I came to terms with my situation. Developed a new outlook and started to put my life back together. A long, slow process, but it's going to work out. It's definitely going to work out."

"Well, I'm glad to hear it, but that doesn't explain what you're doing in my apartment. Or give you any right to be here."

Dain got slowly to his feet. Rennert stiffened, but Dain didn't come his way; instead he moved to the undraped picture window and stood peering out.

"Quite a view from here," he said. "You can see a lot
of the park. On clear days I'll bet you can see the
ocean, too."

Rennert said, "That's it, the park."

"What about the park?"

"That's where I've seen you before. Panhandling in the park."

"I don't do that," Dain said in an offended tone.
"I've never once resorted to panhandling."

"All right. Wandering around over there then."

"I've seen you in the park too. Several times."

"How did you find out where I live?"

"I followed you the last time. Yesterday."

"Why? Why
me
?"

"You were always alone, whenever I saw you, and I wanted to find out if you lived alone."

"Well, now you know," Rennert said shakily. "I live alone and you live in one of the homeless camps in the park. So what? What's the idea if you don't intend to rob me?"

"I've been existing in one of the camps, yes. I hate it. I hate being homeless."

"I'm sure you do. It has to be rough—"

"You have no idea how rough, Mr. Rennert. Only
those of us who've been through it really know."

"I believe that. And I'm sympathetic, I truly am. But I think you'd better leave now."

"Why?"

"Why? Because I don't want you here. Because you're trespassing. Because you won't tell me why you broke in or what it is you want."

"I did tell you," Dain said. "You weren't listening."

"All you told me is that you've started to put your
life back together, and I can't help you with that."

"But you can."

"How? How can I?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"Not to me. Do you want me to call the police?"

"Then leave. Just leave, right now. I don't want any trouble with you."

Dam looked at him in silence. A sad, waiting look. No, not sad—hungry.

"Go away," Rennert said desperately, "leave me alone. Don't you understand? I can't do anything for you!"

Dain said, "You're the one who doesn't understand, Mr. Rennert. I told you I hate being homeless and I meant just that. A decent job, possessions, even a wife and family—I can manage without those. But I can't go on, I can't have any kind of life, without a home."

"For God's sake, what does that have to do with me? This is
my
apartment,
my
home—"

"Not anymore," Dain said.

Understanding came to Rennert in a thunderous jolt. Even before he recognized the object Dan took from his pocket, heard the faint snicking sound, and saw the shine of steel, he understood everything. Panic sent him running into the hail, his mouth coming open and a scream rising in his throat.

He didn't quite make it to the door. And the scream didn't quite make it all the way out.

D
ain sighed, a deep and heartfelt sigh. "It's good to be home," he said, and went into his bathroom to wash the blood off his hands.

I like cats. Better than dogs and much better than some humans, in fact. You might not think so when you finish reading "Tom," but the story grew out of a wry glimmer of understanding of the cat psyche—my wife and I are owned by two and we've been owned by others over the years—rather than out of any aversion. I have no illusions about the cute and cuddly little buggers; if my cats could manage it, especially on those days when their food bowl doesn't get filled on time, Decker's fate could very well be mine.

D
ecker was so absorbed in the collection of Fredric Brown stories he was reading that he didn't see the cat jump onto the balcony railing. He felt its presence after a while, and when he glanced up there it was, switching its tail and staring at him.

At first he was startled; it was as if the cat had materialized out of nowhere. Then he felt a small pleasure. Except for birds and two deer running in the woods, it was the first living creature he'd seen in two weeks. Not that he minded the solitude here; it was the main reason he'd come to this northern California wilderness—a welcome change from his high-pressure Silicon Valley computer job, and a chance to work uninterrupted on the novel he was trying to write. But after fourteen days he was ready for a little company, even if it was only a stray tomcat.

He closed the well-worn paperback and returned the cat's stare. "Well," he said, "hello there, Tom. Where'd you come from?"

The cat didn't move except for its switching tail. Continued to watch him with eyes that were an odd luminous yellow. Otherwise it was an ordinary
Felis catus
, a big butterscotch male with the unneutered tom's overlarge head. It might have been anywhere from three to ten years old.

A minute or so passed—and Decker's feeling of pleasure passed with it. There was something strange about those steady unblinking eyes, something in their depths that might have been malice . . .

No, that was silly. A product of his hyperactive imagination, nurtured for nearly twenty years now by a steady diet of mystery and horror fiction, his one passion other than microtechnology. A product too, he thought, of the coincidental fact that the cat's sudden appearance had coincided with his reading of a Brown story called "Ailurophobe," which was about a man who had a morbid fear of cats.

He
had no such fear; at least he'd never been afraid of cats before today. And yet . . . those funny luminous eyes. He had never encountered a cat quite like this one before today.

His mind conjured up another Brown story he'd read, about an alien intelligence that had come to Earth and taken over the body of the protagonist's pet cat.

Then, in spite of himself, he remembered a succession of other stories by other writers about cats who were demons and sorcerers, about human beings who were werecats.

Decker suppressed a shiver. Shook himself and smiled a little sheepishly. "Come on," he said aloud, "that's all pure fantasy. Cats are just cats."

He got up and crossed to the railing. The torn seemed to tense without actually moving. Decker said, "So, guy, what're you doing way out here in the piney woods?" and reached out a hand to pat the animal's head.

Before he could touch it, the cat leaped gracefully to the floor and ran through the open doors into the cabin. He blinked after it for a few seconds, then followed it inside. Where he found it sitting on one arm of the wicker settee, flicking its tail and staring at him again.

For a reason he couldn't explain, Decker began to feel apprehensive. "Hell," he said, "what's the matter with me? Tom, you're nothing to be afraid of."

The apprehension did not go away. Neither did the cat. When Decker walked deliberately to the settee, with the intention of either shooing or carrying the tom outside, it bounded off again. Took up another watchful position on top of a battered old bookcase.

"All right now," Decker said, "what's the idea? You want something, is that it? You hungry, maybe?"

The fur along the cat's back rippled. Otherwise it sat motionless.

Decker nodded. "Sure, that must be it. Big old tom like you, you need plenty of fuel. If I give you something to eat, you'll go away and let me get back to my reading."

He went into the kitchen, poured a little milk into a dish, tore two small strips of white meat from a leftover Swanson's chicken breast, and took the food back into the living room. He put it down on the floor near the bookcase, backed off half a dozen paces.

The cat did not move.

"Well, go ahead," Decker said. "Eat it and get out."

Ten seconds died away. Then the tom jumped off the bookcase, walked past the food without pausing even to sniff it, and sat down again in the bedroom doorway.

Okay
, Decker thought uneasily,
so you're not hungry. What else could you want?

He made an effort to recall what he knew about cats. Well, he knew they had been considered sacred by the ancient Egyptians, who worshiped them in temples, paraded them on feast days, embalmed and mummified them when they died and then buried them in holy ground. And that the Egyptian goddess Bast had supposedly endowed them with semidivine powers.

He knew that in the Middle Ages they had been linked to the Devil and the practice of Black Arts and were burned and tortured in religion-sanctioned witch hunts.