Or someone else?

Or something else? “Who is it?” she called, as she made her way slowly toward the front door.

No one answered.

She hesitated at the door and called again, “Who is it?”

“It’s me,” someone said, in a familiar voice.

Ed Smith’s voice.

But he wouldn’t have knocked and rung like that. He had a key now, after all.

She threw a glance up the stairs at the bathroom door. It stood open a crack, the room beyond dark.

“Just a minute,” she called.

She hurried up the steps, almost running, pushed the door open and turned on the light, to have it ready. She didn’t want to fumble in the dark.

She didn’t have time to check everything, not without arousing suspicion, but a quick glance around spotted nothing wrong. She turned and headed back down.

“Come on, Annie, open the door,” Smith’s voice was calling.

She paused to catch her breath, then reached out and turned the knob.

Immediately, the door was pushed open, and she found herself facing not Ed Smith, but a big, fat man in a greasy T-shirt and old Levis.

He grinned at her.

She stepped back, startled.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Joe Samaan, at the moment,” he said, still in Ed Smith’s voice. “May I come in?”

She backed up onto the bottom step of the staircase. “Well, I…” she began.

“You don’t really have a choice,” the thing said, still grinning.

She stepped back, up another step.

The creature stepped in in a rush of warm, fetid air, and behind it came another man, another stranger, also grinning. She could see a third, a woman, out on the porch.

Simple nervousness turned to real fright. She hadn’t expected a whole group of them.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

The thing that called itself Joe Samaan wiggled a finger at her. “Can’t you guess, Annie?” it asked. “Tsk, tsk, I thought you’d figure it out right away.”

“Well, I didn’t, mister,” Annie snapped defiantly. “What do you and your friends think you’re doing?”

“What are we doing?” It grinned, and silvery teeth glittered. “Well, we’re planning a little welcome home party for your friends, Ed Smith and Khalil Saad, when they get here.” It stepped closer, and she backed farther up the stairs; she was halfway up and it was at the foot, now, and the other two had crowded into the foyer behind it.

The one pretending to be female closed the door, pushing gently until the latch clicked into place.

“I don’t think you should do that,” Annie said, trying desperately to figure out what to do about there being three of them, when she had only expected one. Being scared wasn’t going to do any good. The things were horrible, but they weren’t omnipotent; Smith and Khalil and that Lieutenant Buckley had been killing them easily enough once they knew how. The main advantages the creatures had lay in their unfamiliarity and their viciousness, and she knew enough of them to cut into that unfamiliarity.

Smith and the others could work up to a pretty good level of viciousness, too, and she thought she could manage that herself – but how could she counter being outnumbered three to one?

The thing gave her no clue. It just grinned.

She couldn’t think of anything.

All she could do was go through the motions, do what she could, and hope that Smith and Khalil got back in time to save her, and that they weren’t caught off-guard.

She wished she’d thought to fetch a knife from the kitchen before she opened the door, so at least she could go down fighting.

“Are you going to kill me?” she asked.

She knew perfectly well they were going to kill her, if they could – not necessarily here and now, but sooner or later. They were evil; killing was what they did, their very essence. She was just stalling.

“Why, no, Annie,” it said, advancing. “Why would I want to kill you? I’m not going to hurt you at all.” She was retreating, and almost at the top. “In fact,” it said, “I’d like to give you a kiss.”

She was at the top; the leader was halfway up the stairs, the others waiting in the hall below, certain that they wouldn’t be needed to deal with one frightened old woman.

She turned and ran for the bathroom.

The thing bounded up the remaining steps and ran after her.

She made it through the door, but before she could turn and slam it, the thing was right there, forcing its way into the tiny room. Annie didn’t try to fight it; she just backed away again, pushing aside the shower curtain and stepping into the bathtub.

The thing pursued her, right up to the shower curtain, just as she expected.

She reached up, took the wires from the showerhead, and pulled hard.

The bottom of the shower curtain snapped out and slapped against the thing’s ankles, wrapping itself around its legs, as the loop of wire she had painstakingly sewn into the heavy plastic curtain and then threaded through a dozen pulleys and guides was yanked tight.

The nightmare person, caught completely unprepared, lost its balance and fell heavily forward; she scrambled out of its way as it tore the curtain down from the rings.

It roared incoherently as it sprawled in the tub.

Before it could recover she wound the wires around its neck and ankles, binding the curtain in place at both ends.

Here she paused, diverging slightly from her plan, to slam shut the bathroom door and bolt it from the inside.

Then she went back to her captive, and with the rest of the wire and rolls of adhesive tape and reinforced package tape she finished the job of securely binding it up in the plastic curtain.

Unfortunately, that was as far as her original scheme could take her; she hadn’t expected to be trapped in the bathroom with two more of the nightmare people waiting outside.

The thing had overcome its initial surprise and was beginning to struggle vigorously. She hoped her wrappings would hold.

She heaved the thing’s legs up and over the side, and left it lying in the tub, while she sat down on the toilet to decide what to do next.

The thing shouted, “Let me up! Get this thing off me!” The shower curtain did surprisingly little to muffle it.

Someone knocked on the bathroom door.

“Hey, what’s going on in there?” an unfamiliar voice called.

Annie looked up. “I’ve got your friend,” she said. “He’s my prisoner.”

The one in the tub bellowed so loudly she was sure the others couldn’t hear her over that racket. The noise it made echoed off the tile and hurt her ears.

“Oh, shut up, you!” she shouted back at it. “Don’t you want to know what’s happening?”

It shut up, reluctantly.

“Now,” she said loudly, directing her comments at the closed door, “As I was saying, I’ve got your friend tied up, and I’ve got my husband’s old straight razor. You two both get the heck out of my house, right now, or I’ll… I’ll cut out this thing’s heart and eat it!”

She wished she actually did have that old razor, but it was long gone. She hadn’t seen it in thirty years or more. She wondered, even as she spoke, whether there was anything sharp in the bathroom, in case she had to carry out her threat.

She knew that Smith had killed at least one nightmare person with just his teeth and nails, but she didn’t think she had the strength or the stomach for that.

The two outside the bathroom were conferring quietly; she could hear their voices, but she couldn’t make out the words.

“If you’re thinking you can just break that door down and get me,” Annie called, “Remember, I already fooled this one. We were expecting you to try something like this; the whole house is booby-trapped. You can go now, or you can stumble around into one of the other traps, or you can wait until the others get here.”

She was sweating, she realized, sweating hard for the first time in years. It wasn’t from exertion; she hadn’t done anything all that frightful, just run up the stairs and tied up her captive – not that that was easy at her age!