His name was Gary, and he couldn't think unless he was moving.
He'd tried. Sitting at a desk drove him batshit; sitting in a restaurant, pub, park, on the moon...if he wasn't mobile in some way, his brain stopped producing anything more notable than banal, animalistic thoughts: feed, sleep, light a cigarette. He was a shark: when he stopped moving, he died.
So he moved.
Different methods of travel led to different sorts of thought. Driving--commanding a machine based on incomprehensible policies of physics--led to ultrasith stories of science fiction: other species on other worlds, casually overlooking commonplace fusionbased engines and discarding quantum-computerised plastic scrolls once they'd downloaded the day's news. That was driving. That was the result of using what little technology existed in the modern world.
It wasn't what he wanted.
What he wanted was a simpler, older sort of thought. Fear.
He wanted a tale of horror. True terror. Not the twenty-first century formulaic parcel of bullshit which had fallen into vogue and stuck there like old meat flung from a faulty grinder. Brainwrenching fear.
He wanted to scare people.
His agent and publisher thought he was nuts. No one wanted a classic horror story anymore. People wanted to read [or, at the very least, purchase and place onto their coffeetables in a burst of affordable conspicuous consumption] modern horror. Reality-based pageturners. Frankenstein's Monster had been replaced, in a matter of decades, with the fictional serial killer; the modern horror novel was five hundred pages of bombastic exposition and rhetoric, overdescribing the least important aspects of some phantasm, his plot-twisting oedipal complex, and his quirky lucky scalpel, loosed upon a suburban setting in Anytown, USA, with just enough current events in the background to be released as a work Based on a True Story.
Gary didn't want to play with that. It simply didn't matter. It didn't scare anyone, and it didn't remain in anyone's mind unless the cinematic version [Based on a Novel Based on a True Story] happened to include a brand-name superstar in the role of Our AntiHero who happened to sleepwalk his way toward a simplistic oneliner which could be parroted out in restaurants during bar rush by any given group of hillbillies who might have had sober IQs of room temperature. He didn't want to be involved with any of it; it just wasn't his scene.
He wanted to write about monsters.
And, in order to do that, he had to be moving.
He had no particular need for a tape recorder on his walks through the midnight darkness. That was his method. His muse, if pretension were truly required to describe the act. He would walk in the night, glance at the full moon, and let the idea happen. He would glance at the shadows and listen to the sounds. He would allow his imagination to steer him through the void; when it happened across an unpleasant thought, he'd ask it to pull over and investigate it.
And that's what he was doing now. Walking through the neighbourhood and letting the monsters come to him.
He'd moved, of course. The old neighbourhood had become too familiar to him. The shadows there all contained the same creatures. They'd become neighbours over the years. His walks had evolved from excursions into terror into a casual stroll past the time-weathered faces of reprints. The old monsters had become as boring, predictable, and annoying as the serial killers splattered across the pages of his competitors' books.
He needed new blood. Or, perhaps, a new place to bleed. Whether he led the story or the story led him was something he'd never fully worked out. And that was just as well: as long as he didn't fully understand the operation, it was working. No need to fuck with a working machine.
He'd moved. He'd set up in a quiet, suburban neighbourhood. The sort of gametrail on which those boring, three-dimensional serial killers stalked their boring, two-dimensional prey with their boring, one-dimensional weapons. Ironic, but soothing. Not too much noise to think; not too much noise to drown out the important noises: the leaves rustling in the wind in the shadows in the corners, the stream babbling incessantly about something murky and bubbly. The odd car might drive by, but those were usually a few streets over, identified only by the hum of faraway tyres on uncharted asphalt, or by the ominous thumping of ribcrushing subwoofers creeping through the night air like an invisible tyrannosaur apathetically watching for easy food.
Most of the sounds were subtle. And, given the imagination to accommodate them in the correct style, all of the sounds were scary.
It was important, of course, to walk on warmish, calm nights. Walking in the rain made him too environmentally aware of his position to think about where he might otherwise be--scarier places, where things waited with large, bloodstained teeth. Walking in the snow was better, but led quickly to the growing suspicion that he'd be warmer in his car, or even at his desk.
Probably so; but his desk had to wait until he had the idea; and the idea was on the other side of his nightly walk through the streets of fear.
The new neighbourhood was alien. It could have been the surface of Venus for all the streetsigns told him. He kept track of them, but only to find his way back home again. He'd tried, in the past, to become literally lost; he'd eventually found his way home, but the idea he'd gone out to contract like a freefloating virus hadn't bothered to accompany him that far.
Know the way home; pretend to get lost. That was the way to do it.
He walked. He listened. He imagined.
He imagined things in the shadows between the streetlights. And in the trees. And round the corners up ahead. And behind.
The things he imagined lurking behind him always looked a little creepier in his head than the things laying in wait down the road. Possibly because the things which followed were slightly more intelligent. Craftier. They'd waited for him. They'd waited until he'd walked by the spot in which they'd sat, watching his approach in preternatural silence; once he'd passed them, within easy reach of their impossible claws, they'd slithered inaudibly to their feet [or tentacles, or whatever] and begun to follow him. Boldly. Noiselessly, but perfectly out in the open. Because they knew they could catch him if he were to happen to turn round and spot them.
Finding them out was not the best method of escape; it was merely the fastest way to get it over with. Seen, the monster would grin that hideous, imperceptibly reptilian grin. Then it would move at the speed of light and have his throat in its claws. Or its teeth. Whatever caused the most pain and the slowest death.
He walked, envisioning the monsters in his mind. Building the perfect beast. Genesplicing alligators to spiders to maggots and leeches and anglerfish. The time for typing the words would come later; for now, he created the image he would later describe in the stark black and white of the night through which he walked.
The paper, of course, was limited: the whitespace had majority control; the night was primarily black.
The breeze picked up a notch. It wasn't windy, just restless. Leaves tapdanced through the darkness, packhunting the unwary crisppacket which slamdanced carelessly into the hazy cone of light from the closest lamppost. There was a light fog in the air, nearly too thin to see at all, visible only from a distance. Walk into the fog, and poof: it's gone, moved a safe distance away to the next streetlight, waiting there and taunting the crisppacket with promises of safety.
Somewhere in the invisible distance, a twig snapped. Something was out there, watching him, licking its scaly lips, waiting to feed. He smiled slightly as he worked out its physiology.
He walked on, wondering casually what had really snapped the twig--but not too much; it was better to believe ardently in the monster which must have misstepped. Presuming it hadn't meant to be heard. Perhaps it was even bolder than the thing following him now. Perhaps it was willing to wait, out in the open, under a sodium light, wearing a black fedora with a shiny white band and flipping a quarter to pass the time.
He erased that thought exactly out of his head; it wasn't the sort of monster he wanted to meet tonight. He wanted something less...likeable. Fred Krueger, Jason Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Fucking Pinhead were great for making a hundred million bucks even before hitting the video market, but they weren't really monsters anymore; they were less anatomically-correct versions of the ubiquitous serial killers, all of whom were based on Norman Bates in one way or another. Fuck'em; it was time to show the world a new sort of monster. The sort which simply kills and eats. The sort which is far more of an It than a He.
The sort of monster you wouldn't have a cup of coffee with. The sort of monster you don't cheer for when it kills the next SorWhore with a machete.
The sort which scares the fucking hell out of you. And you just never get better again, regardless how bright the lights are.
The twig had snapped just up ahead. Probably in the yard behind the fence he was beginning to pass. One of those tall cedarwood things so common to modern suburbs--more of a wooden wall than a fence. He liked those sorts of fences--particularly when the lightsource was on the far side. This time, as luck would have it, it was. He lit a cigarette at the light behind the fence, and blew smoke at the slats.
The smoke curled in iridescent blue in the ribbons of light, folding into a nightmarish ghoul of nothingness; it danced and grinned and dissipated.
His eyes refocused beyond the departing mist, and he saw...he didn't know.
It may have been a face there in the darkness. Or it may have been a shrub. Whatever it had been, it had startled his heart into a staccato beat, and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
Probably a shrub. His rational mind, which enjoyed being housed in a sane, living organism, decided that it was probably a shrub.
The other half of his mind, which the rational half truly fucking hated, asked the most important question.
If it were a shrub, it asked, where in the living hell did it go?
The rational mind shrugged. Mind your own business, it told the curious, imaginative, dangerous mind.
The creative mind was minding its business, of course. Its business was to ask the evil questions. If it were a shrub, where did it go. A valid, rational concern.
The valid, rational mind declared the fanciful, creative mind of being the dumber half and went back to regulating the lower involuntary functions of the body.
That left the creative mind alone to think about the so-called shrub it had only glanced for an instant.
It had been a face. Of sorts. Not really a face, but a way for it to see. To look back at him. Whatever it had been--and certainly it hadn't been a fucking shrub--had seen him. It had seen him see it. It had decided that the instantaneous glimpse had been enough; then it had gone away during that nothingth of a second in which he had blinked. He smoked his cigarette and walked on.
It had been able to look at him, but not because it had possessed eyes. He couldn't remember seeing any eyes in its face--if it had even been a face by any vernacular twist of the word. It had been a shape, and it had been able to see him. That was as human as it had been. At least, in that fleeting instant before he'd finished focusing and started to see the thing which had then disappeared into thin air.
The rational mind cleared its throat. It didn't disappear, Dumbass: it was never there in the first place. A bit of leftover smoke. Calm down.
If there were a surgical procedure which allowed for the excision of the rational mind, novelists would line up for blocks on end.
The illusion was exposed. The monster had been a wisp of smoke. Of course. And now it was a sad joke in his mind. Both halves. All that working up to the least probable conclusion, blown away by a reasonable doubt. He'd have to start over.
Behind him, and behind the fence, another twig snapped.
This time, he jumped. His rational mind got to him first.
A dog.
Yes: a dog; of course; a harmless, silent, invisible dog. Happens all the time.
Not a dog: the monster you saw in that instant. Playing with you. Making you crazy.
A dog; nothing more.
A dog, you say? Show me the dog.
The rational mind faltered a bit.
Show you?
Yes: show me. Turn around and optically ingest this fucking dog; I wanna see it; I wanna see it right now, this dog of yours.
The rational mind considered the demand.
You're not, perchance, afraid to turn around and look at this, ah, dog of yours, are you? Certainly, it can't hurt to look at a single little silent, invisible--
Stop it. Shut the fuck up, and we'll have a look.
Will we.
We shall.
Yeah? Go ahead: look. I dare you.
Okay. Let's look, then.
Yes: let's.
He was the tiebreaker in the situation; he was the one controlling the muscles. He could turn and look, or not.
He didn't really want to look.
The rational mind was somewhat afraid of being proved wrong when he turned and looked the monster full in the face. The creative mind was somewhat afraid of misimagining the thing all this time. He, in short, was afraid to look at all.
It's a dog, the rational mind assured all involved.
Okay; whatever, the creative mind agreed sarcastically, granting that it got itself out of seeing the monster it knew was there.
He walked on. He smoked his cigarette a little more seriously.
He reached the next fence. The next yard. Safe.
Safe enough to turn and look behind him?
Well...let's not get jumpy here; it's cool; nothing to see: move along.
He did. He moved along, past the yard to his right, and the next yard, and the next after that, noting regrettably the static quality of the damned fence. The fence was going to sit there until he reached the next sidestreet. Yards were partitioned by more fences, but this one fence in particular was fully a block long. And the NadaDog lay beyond it somewhere; he was certain of that. Somehow.
The break in the fence--the next street--lay several metres ahead. He was uncomfortably aware that he was walking slightly faster now. He was...not panicking, but the option was there whenever he felt like giving it a try.
Yes: the street. Reach the street. That's all we have to do. Home base. Safe. And the crowd goes wild.
A twig snapped.
The rational mind wasn't prepared for it. Because it was on the other side of the fence, of course. But, more importantly, it was closer to the next street than he was.
It was in front of him. And on the other side of the fence. And he could stop and look and see the monster sitting there snapping twigs at him with its huge, toothy, reptilian grin and then it would phase space and be outside the fence and he would be in its claws and that would be that.
He glanced at the fence as he walked; the slats blurred in doppler: he couldn't precisely see between the slats, but he could almost see through them.
What little he saw didn't amount to much: something light and something dark, in no particular order.
The street was up ahead. And whatever lay waiting for him there was less cunning than the twigbreaking creature beyond the fence he no longer wanted to be this close to.
The neighbourhood was dead silent. He became tragically aware of the lack of cars thumping along in the distance. Even the leaves had gone silent, breeze or not. He found himself moving to the left, off the sidewalk and into the grass. A simple sidestep would land him in the vacant street. It would place him more directly under the streetlight he was steadily approaching. It would make him safer, somehow, from the twigcrunching creature which could teleport into his path at any given instant.
The corner enlarged in his vision. The smaller details came into focus. He was essentially there. It was a simple matter of traversing the next dozen yards. And the hydrant.
Some sick bastard had put a damned fire hydrant at the corner. And that just wasn't fair.
He could hop into the street, and admit that he was now actually afraid of the thing beyond the fence. Or he could hop over the hydrant. Or, if the mood suddenly took him, he could just step back onto the sidewalk, into the easy reach of the twigcrunching alligatorid anglerfishy spidermonster.
The hydrant sped toward him. He flashed through his options again. And again after that. And it was a step away, and he zipped deftly to the right.
No: left. Go left.
Left, then. And he was in the street after all. And his pulse was up and he was moving far too fast to be accused of walking through the new neighbourhood; he was speedwalking; the only thing keeping him from running was the altitude: he had one foot sporadically on the ground at all times.
And not, he realised, because he didn't want to be running through the night to get away from the monster he'd built in his mind.
It was because he hadn't fully decided for himself that it wasn't going to be waiting for him in the street beyond the fence.
He slowed to a quirky walk: short of breath, and as quiet as he could be. He heard nothing but his own clumsy footing on the pavement.
He slowed to a full stop, and breathed.
His breathing calmed. But something about it remained.
Other breathing. Nearby and intentional.
It was watching him. His monster.
Victor Frankenstein had come to reproach himself for creating his monster, in the end. And Gary could empathise. The breathing was real; his rational mind confirmed that apologetically.
Somewhere out there, beyond the tiny circle of light in which he stood, his monster was breathing.
Behind him? To the right? The left? Up ahead in the shadows? Above? Beneath?
Inside his head?
His rational mind found a lovely alibi and exposed it. He considered it seriously.
Don't look at me, implored his creative mind, I'm as baffled as you are.
He stood there stupidly in the intersection, thinking about it.
It was pretty silly, after all. Monsters. Lurking in twenty-first century streets. Breathing and snapping twigs.
Fucking dumb.
He let out a sigh of relief, which surprised him with its weight. He really had been scared by the fucking thing. He'd put together a very scary fucking monster.
But it was okay now. Now he'd stopped moving. Now he wasn't thinking that way anymore. Now he was RationalMan, able to leap tall tales in a single bound.
You're a shark, his creative mind whispered as it fell back into hibernation, if you stop moving, you die.
The breeze, hot and wet, tickled at the small hairs on the back of his neck. Except....
It wasn't the breeze. Not really. It was something both more and less tangible than that.
This time, he did turn. Slowly, but quickly enough to get it over with. And his creative mind, he saw, had been wrong after all.
The monster was far worse than he'd imagined.
'Welcome to the neighbourhood,' the monster told him in its toneless, insectile voice, flexing its toothy, reptilian grin and widening its soulswallowing jaws.
The last thing he ever heard was the sound of his bones collapsing with a protesting whine.
--Gremlin
Monday 24th June 2002