Things Beyond Midnight (34 page)

“I represent a major firm,” he told the clerk. “I’m an important man, dammit! What if someone wanted to reach me? My messages might have gone to a nut in 202. Do you understand me?”

The desk clerk said he was very sorry.

Harry walked out to a cab. Gray rain drizzled down from a soot-colored sky and a chill November wind blew the rain against Harrys face.

“Kennedy airport,” he said to the driver. But before he climbed into the taxi he paused.
He’s watching you. That bastard in 202 is watching you.
Harry shaded his eyes against the rain and peered upward at the second-floor street window of room 202.

A tall man was at the open window, ignoring the blowing rain, glaring down at him. The mans face was dark with anger.

Harry stared, unblinking.
Jesus! He even looks like me. Like an older version of me. No wonder the clerk mixed us up. Well, to hell with him!

By the time his jet soared away from New York Harry Dobson put the man from 202 firmly out of his thoughts. Harry was concerned with the report he’d be making to the sales manager back in California. He was working out some statistics on a board in his lap when he happened to notice the passenger in the window seat directly across the aisle.

What—it’s him! Can’t be. Left him back in New York.

The passenger had been reading a magazine; now he raised his head and swung his eyes slowly towards Harry Dobson. Cold hatred flowed from those eyes.

The tourist section was only half filled and Harry had no trouble getting another seat several rows back. Damned if he’d sit there and let this creep give him the evil eye. Maybe Margaret was right; maybe the guy
was
some kind of maniac.

At Los Angeles International Harry was the first passenger to disembark. Inside the airport building he arranged for a porter to collect his flight baggage. Then he waited for it in a cab near the door. Harry didn’t want to risk running into the weirdo at the baggage pickup.

So far so good. The guy was nowhere in sight.

His baggage arrived and Harry tipped the porter and gave the taxi driver an address in West Los Angeles. As the car rolled on to the freeway Harry relaxed. Apparently the creep had made no attempt to follow him. It was over.

Harry paid the driver, carried his bags into the rented apartment, took a bottle from his briefcase and poured himself a drink. He felt fine now. He checked the window just to be certain the guy hadn’t followed him. The street below was empty.

Harry unpacked, took his suits to the closet, opened the sliding door —and fell back, gasping.

The man was
there
, inside the closet! He stood in the darkness, smiling like a fiend. Then he dived at Harry’s throat, hands closing on his wind-pipe. Harry kicked free, tumbled over a chair, twisting away from his attacker.

That’s when the man pulled the knife from his belt.

Harry scrambled around the bed, putting space between himself and his attacker. No good trying for the door; the man would have him if he tried that.

“Who—are you?” gasped Harry. “What—what do you want from me?”

“I want to kill you,” said the man, smiling. “That’s all you need to know.”

Keeping himself between Harry and the door, he began slashing with the knife—ripping the blade into mattress, chairs, curtains, clothing—as Harry watched in numb terror.

But when the man pulled Margaret’s photo from Harry’s briefcase, and drove the knife through it a red rage replaced the fear in Harry Dobson; the bastard was human, after all. Harry was ten years younger, stronger.

The man was half turned toward the bed when Harry struck him with a heavy table lamp. The man fell backward, stunned, dropping the knife.

“You crazy sonuvabitch!” Harry shouted, snapping up the knife and driving it into the man’s back. Once. Twice. Three times. The man grunted, then did not move. Harry stood over him for a long, long moment—but he did not move again.

Who is he? Who the hell is he?
Harry could find no identification on the body. He thought of calling the police but decided that was too risky. There were no witnesses. The apartment had not been burglarized nor were there signs of a forced entry. Bastard must have had a key. To the police it would appear that Harry Dobson had coldly murdered this man.

Insane! I dent even know him. Which is exactly why you must get rid of the body. Once he’s gone there’ll be no way to link you to his death.

That night Harry cleaned up the apartment, placed the blanket-wrapped corpse in the trunk of his car and drove out along the ocean, past Malibu, to a deserted stretch of beach—where he dumped the weighted body into the water.

He was a madman. Simply because you complained about him at the hotel he followed you to the West Coast and tried to kill you. You have no reason to feel guilt. Forget all this. Live your life and forget him.

Harry Dobson tried to do that. When his wife called him he didn’t mention what had happened. And when his business trip ended he returned to New York, and resumed his life.

A decade passed. Each time the face of the dead man from 202 loomed in his mind Harry Dobson shut down the vision. Finally he could look back upon the entire incident as a kind of bizarre dream. He felt neither guilt or fear.

Then, almost ten years to the month, Harry found himself at the same hotel in New York. He was in town on his annual business trip and, this particular visit, had decided to stay at this hotel to prove that the ghost of the man he’d killed was truly exorcised.

In fact, to close the circle, he asked the clerk for the old room, 203.

“Sorry, sir, but that room is occupied. However, I can give you the one right next door to it, room 202. Will that be satisfactory?”

Irony. The dead man’s room. All right, Harry said, that would be satisfactory.

Room 202 contained a double bed, white glass-topped dresser, circular table and chair, a standing brass lamp in the corner... He remembered the furniture! But that was because it was the same, exactly the same, as 203. The rooms on this floor were no doubt identically furnished. The odd thing was that the decor hadn’t been changed in ten years.

Harry took a fresh bottle of Scotch from his suitcase and poured a solid drink for himself The Scotch eased him, reduced his tension. It was late, near midnight, and after several more belts of Scotch he was ready for sleep, amused at the drama of the situation, no longer tense at the prospect of sleeping in a room once occupied by a man he had stabbed to death.

Near morning, Harry began to mumble in his sleep. He was having a bad dream, a nightmare about being convicted of murder. The attorney was hammering at him on the witness stand and Harry had broken under the verbal assault. “I’ve killed,” he admitted. “I’ve killed. I’ve killed.” Over and over. “Killed... killed... killed...”

He finally awoke, sweating, wide-eyed.
Wow, what a hellish dream! It’s this room. That
5
what triggered it, allowed it to take control of my subconscious. But I’m all right now. I’m fine. The dream’s over.

He became aware of voices in 203 filtering through the thin wall of the room. A woman’s voice, whispery but sharp, and upset. “I think you’d better do something.”

“Do what?” asked a man’s voice, muffled but distinct. “Maybe he’s just having a bad dream.”

“But he keeps saying it over and over. It really spooks me. We could be next door to a murderer.”

“So what do you suggest?”

“Call the manager. Have someone investigate.”

Harry heard the springs squeak as the man climbed out of bed. He heard him pick up the phone and say “This is Harry Dobson in room 203. There’s a character next door who’s moaning about having killed somebody...”

Harry didn’t want to hear any more. He walked into the bathroom and vomited into the bowl, remaining on his knees until he heard the door finally slam in 203.

Then, shaking, he walked back into his room and called the desk. “Who—who’s registered in 203?”

“Uh... that’s Mr. Dobson, sir. But he’s checking out.”

“All right,” said Harry evenly. And he put dawn the phone. He walked over to the street window, threw it open. Gray rain, whipped by a chill wind, blew in upon him, stinging his face.

A man came out of the hotel, hailed a cab. Just before he got into the taxi he turned to look up at Harry, shading his eyes against the wet. Younger. A face like his, but ten years younger.
The murdering bastard!
Harry glared down at him.

And when the man was gone, and he had called the airport to confirm his flight back to Los Angeles, Harry Dobson took the knife out of his suitcase and held it in his hand for a long, long moment.

Knowing, beyond any doubt, that he would eventually die by it.

00:20
THE PARTY