Dark Screams: Volume Two by Robert R. McCammon, Graham Masterton, Richard Christian Matheson Read Free Book Online Page B

man.”
    “That’s enough!” And she was pointing at him, jabbing his shoulder with her forefinger for emphasis. “You can’t blame someone because you don’t like the way he looks. Because you don’t like the way he loves.” How did she summon the nerve to touch him like that?—a small-framed girl against this stocky bigot who no doubt played football or wrestled in high school, lifted weights twenty years later to fight back the gut from weekend drinking. And even more surprising, her outburst seemed to work. He dropped the arm with the camera and stepped back, a sadness and realization on his face, and she felt as if, in a one-minute confrontation, she’d startled him out of a lifetime of prejudice. No miracles for people on Flight 1137, sadly, but maybe a small miracle here.
    “You’re mistaken.” He shook his head. “I’m not homophobic. He lies. That’s what he does.” Again the irony and scorn in the pronoun.
    “Not a man,” he repeated. “I know how it sounds. But the first time we met, he was an Asian janitor who worked nights on the intensive-care floor. My teenage daughter was in a coma. Five months, with a hopeless prognosis, but I tried to believe. I tried so hard. That’s the interval.”
    He wasn’t a reporter. She reevaluated his unshaven face, mussed hair, and wrinkled clothes. Michelle had made allowances for people’s distress—
of
course
they’d all look worried and frantic, black circles under their eyes as if they hadn’t slept for days. But this guy was too comfortable in his crazed appearance; it wasn’t a symptom of fresh grief.
    “The interval. When you know something’s bad, but you can’t quite give up. You hold on to your faith, squeeze it close, but it gets weaker and weaker because you’re smothering it. And
he
gets stronger.”
    Michelle wanted to walk away, but something in his manner held her fast. Perhaps she obeyed an unwritten etiquette for dealing with crazy people, especially after you’d confronted them. She needed to let him explain himself.
    “An interval demon,” he continued. “That’s what I call him. He thrives on the interval between when people dread something and when they find out for certain. At hospitals, of course. After natural disasters, after terrorist attacks. The more people, the more they wait in agony for terrible news, the stronger he gets. Do you understand?”
    Michelle nodded, not caring what she agreed to.
    “Yes, you can understand how this is a good one for him. Everyone in that room suspects someone in their family has died. But the airline dangles hope in front of them, draws it out. And the demon taunts people, walks around the room and gets them to talk about God and faith. That’s how he gained power to perform his trick, flashing those images on the screen. He showed enough to ratchet up the fear, but not enough to demolish their hopes completely.”
    “I should get back to the room,” Michelle offered. He ignored her and continued to spin out his twisted logic.
    “These days,” he explained, “cellphones and quick disaster response close the interval, making knowledge of tragedy more immediate. The demon has to sniff out places where the outcome will linger, uncertain.”
    Ridiculous. Even if she could accept the preposterous element at the center of his story—a shape-changing demon strengthened by human tragedy—how was this reporter (this hunter, as he fashioned himself) able to follow the demon, much less identify it? This crazy guy was nothing more than a vagrant who stumbled into an emotionally charged scene, chose a scapegoat, and tried to stir up trouble.
    “We have a connection,” he said, sensing her skepticism. “Ever since my little girl died. That’s how we sometimes end up in the same place.” He swept the digital camera in a wide arc, taking in the outside wall of office 2-C behind her. “The demon won’t have gone far. It gains more energy the closer it is to the crisis.” He stopped,