The Midnight Men and Other Stories (2 page)

“Ted?” I said, lowering my voice, aware of the ominous presence at the end of the drive. “Do you want me to call the police, Ted?”

He shook his head.

“Police?” cried Alice. “You should call a goddamn psychiatrist, Ben!” She thumped her husband hard in the arm, a real full-on punch, but Ted didn’t seem to feel it. He looked down the path, his attention drawn to the man in black, as if the stranger had sent him a mental command.

“I have to go, Ben,” he said, his once-authoritative voice now timid, thin.

“But why, Ted?” I demanded. “Why do you have to go?”

He met my gaze. “Because I made the choice.”

Because I made the choice.

That’s exactly what Phil Robinson said.

“What choice, Ted?”

He didn’t answer me. He was moving down the path again, and I matched his footsteps on my side of the fence. When he reached the open car door, I rushed to intercept him, grabbing his arm and turning him round to face me.

“Ted, this is insane! Where are you going? Where are they taking you?”

Ted’s eyes were bloodshot, wide with fear. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Oh, yes you do!” Alice cried.

We both looked round. Alice had stopped some way back on the garden path. Her arms were folded, her white features set like marble in the clear moonlight.

“You know exactly where they’re taking us! You made the choice, Ted, remember? Only, I’m not going!” She shifted her gaze from Ted to the man in black. “Y’hear me? I’m not going!”

The man in the black hat turned to Ted. Although his eyes were hidden by the shadows beneath the hat, Ted seemed to read some silent communication.

“Honey, you have to come,” Ted said, holding his hands out in a pleading gesture. “I made the choice for you!”

She shook her head defiantly, but a moment later tears filled her eyes and she sank down to her knees. For a few moments we all just stared at her, a tragic figure weeping on her own garden path. Then Ted walked over and gently helped her to her feet. The fight seemed to have left her. Still crying, she allowed herself to be led to the car.

Before they could climb into the back seat, I stepped into their path.

“I can’t let you go, Ted!” I said. “This stinks. I won’t let these bastards take you away!”

The man in black was suddenly beside me, yet I hadn’t seen him move from his position some metres away. His hand gripped my shoulder, a hand which looked like dead white meat. I could feel its chill through the fabric of my robe.

I reached up to remove his hand, but the grip was immoveable. My anger and frustration flared up and I whirled on him, throwing my best right hook, connecting with a satisfying crunch around the bridge of his nose. The blow knocked the hat from his head. When he turned back to me, with the moonlight falling across his pale features, my gut filled with ice water at what I saw.

His features were plain, unexceptional, all except for his eyes. They were huge, the size of coasters, and they had a wet, jelly-like appearance, like fish-eyes. I thought of those creatures which live at the bottom of deep sea trenches, whose eyes grow to enormous size from the absence of light. He raised a hand to shield himself from any further blows, but the shock of such a hideous sight had knocked the fight out of me. He stooped to pick up his hat, and carefully placed it back on his head.

“Ben,” said Ted behind me. “Forget it.”

“There’s nothing you can do,” said Alice.

I turned to face them. I’d known Ted and Alice for ten years. They were the best neighbours—the best friends—a guy could have.

They both managed faltering smiles, and then disappeared into the huge back seat of the car. The man in black shut the door behind them and marched round to the driver’s door. He paused before getting in, glaring at me from the shadows beneath his hat. I couldn’t see those eyes, but I knew they were there. He seemed to be sending some thought to me. Although I heard no voice in my head, I knew what he was trying to tell me.

Someday soon, I might be seeing him again.

As the car roared away down Cedar Road, I watched it with a cold, empty feeling in my heart. The feeling grew stronger as my eyes drifted up to my own bedroom window, to the faces of my wife and son.

***

Morning came slowly, the dawn light struggling through an ominous blanket of mist on the horizon.

I hadn’t slept. Exhausted, confused, I wandered through the emergency ward like a ghost. The patients passed through my cubicle like a procession of insubstantial clouds. After six hours I couldn’t remember a single one of them.

During a brief respite between patients, I sat alone in a cubicle, my head buried in my hands, fighting the exhaustion that threatened to engulf me. Suddenly, screams erupted in the ambulance loading bay outside. I rushed into the corridor and headed towards the source of the mayhem. An army of paramedics and nurses were surrounding a trolley freshly unloaded from the back of an ambulance. I saw the hands and feet of a patient thrashing back and forth amidst the sea of medical staff.

“We need some help here!” someone shouted.

Without further hesitation, I jumped into the huddle of uniforms.

The patient was a man in his late fifties, very tall, very thin. His eyes were gone, and where they’d been only bloody mounds of scar tissue remained. Blood ran down his face and neck in dark rivulets, soaking into his shirt. The man’s screams sent waves of goose flesh down my back.

“Why wasn’t he restrained?” I cried out, trying to force the man’s arm down.

“He was,” one of the medics answered. “He broke free!”

Before I could say anymore, the man’s muscled arm snapped free of my grip and his fingers closes around my throat. He pulled himself close to me, so close that I could see the torn optic nerves lying in the hollows of his eyes like fat, glistening worms. His breath stank of stale alcohol and death.

“Listen to me!” he barked. “Do not go with them. They are not the saviours they make themselves out to be. You must listen, all of you!”

Stunned, I could only ask, “What are you talking about?”

“He’s in shock!” one of the nurses shouted. “Get him down.”

They were trying to pull him off me, but his grip was like a vice.

“They will offer you a home in their world,” he was saying, spittle flying from his lips, “and they will tell you it is a place of sanctuary from the day of judgement which comes to us all. But I have looked in their eyes and seen their world and it is dark--so dark--devoid of all light or life.”

I was trying to pry his fingers from my throat but they were slick with his own blood.

“And you will be at their mercy there,” he railed, “and they will take everything from you that makes you human. Heed my warning, I implore you: Do not go with those men!”

Just as I was about to pass out from his suffocating grip, his fingers relaxed and he fell back onto the gurney with a shriek of anguish. I stumbled backwards, thumping into a trolley loaded with instruments, gasping for breath.

Slowly, painfully, they forced his thrashing limbs back onto the gurney and managed to strap them down again, one by one. Once contained, the man continued to howl, but in a sobbing fashion. They wheeled him down the corridor and out of sight.

Nurse Andrews came over to me, dabbing at the bloody smears around my neck. “Are you okay, Ben?”

I nodded. The incident had left my tired mind reeling. It almost felt like the remnants of a dream, but the old man’s blood on my hands told me that it was very real.

“What the hell happened to him?” I asked.

“They found him wandering the streets downtown,” she said.

“What happened to his eyes?”

A grimace passed over Nurse Andrews’ face. “His eyes? He tore them out himself.”

***

When I got home that night, Sally was asleep on the sofa. I took a beer from the refrigerator and sat down next to her, happy to listen to the gentle rhythm of her breathing.

After a while, she must have sensed my presence and she reached out for me. The feel of her hand closing over mine filled me with much needed warmth. In a flat monotone, I explained to her what had happened at the hospital. She listened patiently, a sad expression on her beautiful face, and when I finished she said nothing, just took my hand in hers and kissed my fingers.

“What the hell is happening, Sal?” I said.

She offered no answer. And I never expected one.

***

I told Sally to go up to bed, promising her that I would soon join her. My mind was still racing, and I needed to drink my beer, wind down. Lying there on the sofa in the dead of night, the old man’s words ran through my head on a continuous loop.

Was the old man simply insane? Or was his rant the result of close contact with those strange, unearthly figures?

What was it these people were offering that could make sane people like the Robinsons, like Ted and Alice, up and leave in the middle of the night?

Musing on these questions, I slowly spiralled down into sleep.

***

When I snapped awake, I heard my son’s voice in the living room with me, speaking to someone in a low, hushed tone. My heart burned with fear and I sat bolt upright, peering into the darkness. I checked the LED display on my watch.

It read: 12:03

“Caleb!” I shouted.

I heard a movement behind the sofa and when I glanced round, I found my son crouched on the floor, the telephone handset pressed to his ear.

“Yes,” he was saying in a quiet voice. “Yes, I will.”

I rushed over. “Caleb, who are you talking to?”

He looked straight through me, his eyes glazed, as though he was sleep-walking.

“Yes, all right,” he said, oblivious to my presence.

I snatched the handset off him, and put it to my ear. “Who are you?” I screamed into the mouthpiece. But there was no reply, only a harsh, bronchial breathing, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling, exhaling . . .

A sudden bright light flooded the living room, spilling in through the bay windows. Dropping the phone, I staggered over to the curtains and tore them back. Squinting into the blinding glare, I found the outline of the dark figure which had come for the Robinsons, for Ted and Alice. The alien hum of that engine bore into my brain.

“Caleb, go get your mother,” I said, but when I turned around I realised that I was alone in the living room. Caleb was in the hall. I could hear him struggling with the front door latch.

“Caleb! NO!”

I charged into the hallway, just as my son opened the door. For a split second I saw the shape of that black figure on our pathway. I snatched Caleb up in my arms and slammed the door, pushing my full weight against it.

Caleb struggled in my embrace, screaming like some demented, brainwashed child. “Daddy! We have to go! We’ll die if we don’t go!”

“Caleb! Calm down,” I said, trying not to shout, trying to sound like the voice of reason. “What did they say to you?”

“We won’t die, Daddy! If we go with them, we won’t die!” Tears flew from his eyes. “I don’t want to die, Daddy!” His hand reached desperately for the door. “Please don’t let me die! Please!”

I felt something wet across the front of my shirt and when I looked down I saw blood. Caleb’s violent struggling had reopened his knife wounds. I recalled the sight of Caleb on the hospital gurney--his shirt spattered with blood, his face a white death mask--and for a moment I relived that sick dread feeling which filled every part of me at the thought of losing my precious son, my flesh and blood.

I looked through the frosted glass at the ominous silhouette right outside our door. I could hear that hollow, ragged breathing.

Ignoring the blood, I held Caleb tight to my chest, trying to muffle his screams, but at the same time pouring all my fear and love into his body. God help me, but I began to wonder if these men—these creatures of the night—could really take away that fear forever.

A large, colourless hand tapped twice on the glass.

Tak! Tak!

“Caleb, stop screaming.”

Sally’s voice. Calm, soothing. Caleb immediately stopped. Sally stood at the foot of the stairs, an overwhelming sadness in her eyes. She reached out towards us and Caleb passed from my arms into her embrace. The madness seemed to have left him, and he buried his face in his mother’s neck.

“They want us to make a choice, Ben?” Sally said softly. “Is that it?”

The choice.

The choice Phil Robinson had to make. The choice Ted made. For their loved ones.

The choice: To face the inevitable anguish of a mortal life, the pain of losing those we love, or . . . or eternity with them.

That dead hand rapped once more on the frosted glass.

Tak! Tak!

I looked at my wife and my beautiful son, and for a moment I was imagining a world where they would never die, where I would never have to bear the pain of losing them.

“Maybe,” I began, “maybe we should go with them. Like the Robinsons. Like Ted . . .”

But Sally was shaking her head, her eyes bright with fear. “Remember the man in the hospital, Ben?” she whispered. “Remember what he said?”

Yes, I remembered.

and they will take everything from you that makes you human

“Is that what you want, Ben?” Sally said. She looked at the shape hovering outside our front door. “Is that what you want for us? Survival at any price?”

I found myself slipping down the door, all strength in my limbs gone. The drone of the vehicle’s engine was a dagger in my brain.

Sally was right. She was always right. In the end, the choice was very simple.

***

It’s been three days since they came to our house, three days since we made our choice, and now we’re the only ones left in Cedar Road. The houses are all abandoned, the front doors left unlocked. The cars sparkle in the dwindling light. The days are growing steadily shorter. Last night seemed to last forever. And sometimes, during those interminable twilight hours, when everything seems so fragile, so human, a part of me still wonders if we made the right decision. It’s not the one everyone else made but, I guess, sometimes you just have to choose.