The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

‘I don’t think it can move around,’ Pete told her, disengaging his hand. She had left a couple of bleeding scratches, but he wasn’t mad and he didn’t blame her. He probably would have done the same, if it had been his parents. ‘I think it’s stuck in one place.’

‘It can reach,’ she said. ‘It can reach with its tires. They melt.’

‘I’ll watch out,’ Pete said, ‘but I have to try this. Because you’re right. Those cops will come, and it will eat them too. Stay put.’

He walked toward the station wagon. When he was close (but not too close), he unzipped the saddlebag. I have to try this, he had told the kids, but the truth was a little balder: he wanted to try this. It would be like a science experiment. That would probably sound bizarre if he told someone, but he didn’t have to tell. He just had to do it. Very … very … carefully.

He was sweating. With the sun out, the day had turned warm, but that wasn’t the only reason, and he knew it. He looked up, squinting at the brightness. It made his HANGOVER ache, but so what. Don’t you go back behind a cloud. Don’t you dare. I need you.

He took his Richforth magnifying glass out of the saddlebag, and bent to put the saddlebag on the pavement. The joints of his knees cracked, and the station wagon’s door swung open a few inches.

It knows I’m here. I don’t know if it can see me, but it heard me just now. And maybe it smells me.

He took another step. Now he was close enough to touch the side of the station wagon. If he was fool enough to do so, that was.

‘Watch out!’ the little girl called. She and her brother were both standing now, their arms around each other. ‘Watch out for it!’

Carefully – like a kid reaching into a cage with a lion inside – Pete extended the magnifying glass. A circle of light appeared on the side of the station wagon, but it was too big. Too soft. He moved the glass closer.

‘The tire!’ the little boy screamed. ‘Watch out for the TII-YIII-YII-RE!’

Pete looked down and saw one of the tires melting. A gray tentacle was oozing across the pavement toward his sneaker. He couldn’t back away without giving up his experiment, so he raised his foot and stood like a stork. The tentacle of gray goo immediately changed direction and headed for his other foot.

Not much time.

He moved the magnifying glass closer. The circle of light shrank to a brilliant white dot. For a moment nothing happened. Then tendrils of smoke began to drift up. The muddy white surface beneath the dot turned black.

From inside the station wagon there came an inhuman growling sound. Pete had to fight every instinct in his brain and body to keep from running. His lips parted, revealing teeth locked together in a desperate snarl. He held the Richforth steady, counting off seconds in his head. He’d reached seven when the growl rose to a glassy shriek that threatened to split his head. Behind him, Rachel and Blake had let go of each other so they could cover their ears.

At the foot of the rest area entrance ramp, Al Andrews brought Unit 12 to a sliding stop. He got out, wincing at that terrible shrieking sound. It was like an air-raid siren broadcast through a heavy metal band’s amplifiers, he would say later. He saw a kid holding something out so it almost touched the surface of a muddy old Ford or Chevy station wagon. The boy was wincing in pain, determination, or both.

The smoking black spot on the flank of the station wagon began to spread. The white smoke curling up from it began to thicken. It turned gray, then black. What happened next happened fast. Pete saw tiny blue flames pop into being around the black spot. They spread, seeming to dance above the surface of the car-thing. It was the way charcoal briquettes looked in their backyard barbecue after their father doused them with lighter fluid and then tossed in a match.

The gooey gray tentacle, which had almost reached the sneakered foot still on the pavement, snapped back. The car yanked in upon itself again, but this time the spreading blue flames stood out all around it in a corona. It pulled in tighter and still tighter, becoming a fiery ball. Then, as Pete and the Lussier kids and Trooper Andrews watched, it shot up into the blue spring sky. For a moment longer it was there, glowing like a cinder, and then it was gone. Pete found himself thinking of the cold darkness above the envelope of the earth’s atmosphere – those endless leagues where anything might live and lurk.