Read Things Beyond Midnight for Free Online Page A

moving, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t move, fast as an owl blinks. It would cut off her retreat, and when its shark-sharp edges touched her skin she’d be slashed... and eaten alive.
    Which was the really lousy part. You knew it was devouring you while it was doing it. Like a snake swallowing a mouse; the mouse always knows what’s happening to it.
    And Laurie was a mouse. All her life, hiding in the dark, dreaming cinema dreams, she’d been a mouse.
    And now she was about to be devoured.
    She knew she couldn’t stay where she was—because it would come and get her if she stayed where she was. The sofa folded out to make a studio bed, and that’s where she was.
    With the shadow all around her. Black and silent and terrible.
    Waiting.
    Very slowly... very, very slowly, she got up.
    It hadn’t moved.
    Not yet.
    She wished, desperately, that ole Humph was here. Or Gary. Or Alan. Or Clark. Or Clint. Or even Big John. They could deal with shadows because they were shadow people. They moved in shadowy power across the screen. They could deal with Saturday’s shadow. It couldn’t hurt them ... kill them ... eat them alive...
    I’ll jump across, she (probably) told herself. It doesn’t extend more than four feet in front of me—so I should be able to stand on the bed and leap over it, then be out the door before it can—Oh, God! It’s moving! Widening. Coming toward the bed... flowing out to cover the gap between the rug and the door.
    Look how swiftly it moves! Sliding... oiling across the rug... rippling like the skin of some dark sea-thing...
    Laurie stood up, ready to jump.
    There was only a thin strip of unshadowed wood left to land on near the door. If she missed it the shadow-teeth would sink deep into her flesh and she’d—
    “Don’t!” Ernest said from the doorway. He had his .38 Police Special in his right hand. “You’ll never make it,” he told Laurie.
    “My God, Ernest—what are you doing with the gun?” Note of genuine hysteria in her voice. Understandable.
    “I can save you,” Ernest told her. “Only I can save you.”
    And I shot her. Full load.
    The bullets banged and slapped her back against the wall, the way Alan’s bullets had slapped Palance back into those wooden barrels at the saloon.
    I was fast. Fast with a gun.
    Laurie flopped down, gouting red from many places. But it didn’t hurt. No pain for my sis. I’d seen to that. I’d saved her.
    I left her there, angled against the wall (in blood), one arm bent under her, staring at me with round glassy dead eyes, the strap of her nightgown all slipped down, revealing the lovely creamed upper slope of her breasts.
    Had she seen that in the cab near the grocer’s, or had I seen that?
    Was it Ernest who’d talked to Gary outside the U.S. Grant?
    It’s very difficult to keep it all cool and precise and logical. Which is vital. Because if everything isn’t cool and precise and logical, nothing makes any sense. Not me. Not Laurie. Not Ernest. No part. Any sense.
    Not even Saturday’s shadow.
    Now... let’s see. Let’s see now. I’m not Laurie. Not anymore. Can’t be. She’s all dead. I guess I was always Ernest—but police work can eat at you like a shadow (Ha!) and people yell at you, and suddenly you want to fire your .38 Police Special at something. You need to do this. It’s very vital and important to discharge your weapon.
    And you can’t kill Saturday’s shadow. Any fool knows that.
    So you kill your sister instead.
    To save her.
    But now, right now, I’m not Ernest anymore either. I’m just me. Whoever or whatever’s left inside after Laurie and Mama and Ernest have gone. That’s who I am: what’s left.
    The residual me.
    Oh, there’s one final thing I should tell you.
    Where I am now (Secret!) it can’t ever reach me.
    All the doors are locked.
    And the windows are closed. With drawn curtains.
    To keep it out.
    You see, I took her away from it.
    It really wanted her.
    (Ha! Fooled it!)
    It hates me. It