The Nightmare People. Lawrence Watt-Evans

except for one bizarre incongruity.

      She was wearing a hat.

      On a hot, humid day in August, she was wearing a broad-brimmed man’s hat.

      She was wearing a dark slouch hat, blue-black, with one side of the brim turned down.

      5.

      Smith stared silently at her, completely incapable of deciding what to do.

      Then one of the policemen noticed the woman, and pointed her out to Lieutenant Buckley. Buckley spotted her, and called a few orders that Smith didn’t catch.

      Three cops trotted down the parking lot toward the woman; a fourth headed for a patrol car. The woman smiled and waved at them, her little dog tucked in the crook of one arm.

      Smith stared, as the realization slowly percolated into his dazed mind that he recognized the woman. He didn’t know her name, but he had seen her here and there about the complex, walking her dog or taking her trash to the dumpster. Even the flowered nightgown was familiar.

      But he had only seen the slouch hat in his nightmare.

      Had it been a nightmare? He had fought down any suspicion that it was more than that, but that hat— it was hard to be certain, given the distance, and the hot glare of the afternoon sun compared to the gloom of night, and the distortions of a sleep-clouded memory, but it certainly looked like the hat from his dream.

      If he had really seen that hat, then it hadn’t been a nightmare after all, it had been real.

      Either that, or he was still dreaming.

      That was a comforting thought; it could make sense of the mass disappearance. He couldn’t accept it, though. The world around him was too real, too solid. He didn’t sweat like this in his dreams.

      So he was awake, and the hat was real.

      It could be a coincidence, he tried to tell himself as the first cop reached the approaching woman. Or maybe he had seen the hat somewhere and it had stuck in his subconscious.

      Or maybe it hadn’t been a nightmare, but some elaborate practical joke, a false face on a pole held up to his window— but that didn’t make any sense. How could anyone have known he would look out the window just then, at 3:09 in the morning and no other time? How could the face have smiled at him?

      No, a subconscious memory of the hat, that had to be it.

      “Hello, officer,” the woman said. He heard her plainly, her voice bright and cheerful. “Was there really a bomb?”

      “Lieutenant!” the cop called.

      Lieutenant Buckley was already on his way; he brushed past Smith and continued down the sidewalk.

      Smith followed, not entirely sure whether it was simple curiosity that drove him, or something more complex and dangerous.

      The woman had stopped in the middle of the parking lot, the three policemen— no, Smith corrected himself, three officers, two men and a woman— standing in a semi-circle around her, carefully out of reach.

      The lieutenant left the sidewalk and squeezed between two cars; Smith stopped there and leaned forward to listen, his hand on the peeling vinyl top of an old Lincoln.

      “Ma’am,” the lieutenant said while still walking, “What’s this about a bomb?”

      “Well, was there a bomb or not?” the woman demanded. “That’s what that boy told us, who came and got us all out of bed this morning— he said some of those crazy Iranian terrorists had planted dynamite all around the place and were going to blow us up. Did they really?”

      “Hold on, ma’am,” Buckley said, raising his hands in a calming gesture. “We don’t know anything about any terrorists. Can you tell me what happened?”

      The woman stared at him. “Are you on the bomb squad?” she demanded.

      “No, ma’am,” he replied, “I’m a detective, Lieutenant Daniel Buckley. And you are?”

      She considered, and apparently decided it was a fair question. “I’m Nora Hagarty,” she said. “I live in B22. This is Bozo.” She held up the dog, a small gray mongrel with a surly expression.

      “Pleased to meet you,” Buckley said, with a faint nod. “Ms. Hagarty, you live in Apartment B22, here in the Bedford Mills complex?”

      “That’s what I said, Officer,” she answered, her smile gone.

      “Ms. Hagarty,” Buckley asked, “What happened this morning? If you don’t mind, why are you out here in the parking lot in a nightgown?”

      “Well, that’s what I was saying, Officer!” She shifted Bozo to her other arm and explained, “Some boy came around this morning at about five o’clock and woke us all up, nicely, though, he was very polite and well-spoken, and he said that the management had sent him, that some terrorist group or other was going to blow the entire complex up with dynamite because one of the owners did something the Iranians didn’t like, had helped hide Salman Rushdie or something like that. So I got Bozo, and we hurried out here and we all went over to that building over there, and we hid in the basement.” She turned, and pointed with her free hand, indicating the unfinished office building.

      Lieutenant Buckley nodded. “Go on,” he said.

      “Well, that’s where we all are, but I got tired of waiting, so I came up to see what was going on, and I looked over here and saw all your cars and came over to ask if you’d found all the dynamite yet. Did you?”

      “We haven’t found any dynamite, Ms. Hagarty,” Buckley told her. “I think it must have been a prank. We’ll check, though.”

      “A prank?” Her voice rose in outrage. “But we’re all over there in our pajamas, and we’ve missed work because we didn’t dare come back for our clothes! It’s almost been fun, in a scary sort of way, but I have better things to do! Whose idea of a prank is this, anyway?”

      “I don’t know, Ms. Hagarty,” Buckley said. He turned to one of the officers and muttered something Smith couldn’t catch; the officer nodded, then turned and trotted back toward the main body of police.

      Buckley gestured to the policewoman, and said, “Ms. Hagarty, if you’ll go to that van over there, this officer will take your statement, and then I think we can let you go back to your apartment, and you can get on with whatever you should be doing. Thank you for your cooperation.”

      Nora Hagarty started to say something, but just then Bozo made a bid for freedom, scrabbling and trying to leap down from her arms, and she had to struggle to haul him back up to her generous bosom, leaving dirty paw-prints on her nightgown.

      “This way, Ms. Hagarty,” the policewoman said. With a hand on Ms. Hagarty’s elbow, she started across the parking lot. Buckley headed in the other direction, toward the office building.

      Smith called out, “Ms. Hagarty!”

      “Yes?” She stopped abruptly and turned to stare at him. The policewoman stopped as well.

      “I’m sorry to bother you, Ms. Hagarty,” Smith said, “But where did you get that hat?”

      Startled, Hagarty reached up and removed the slouch hat, revealing a headful of curlers, and looked at it. “This thing? Why, I’ve had it for years. I just threw it on on my way out the door, to keep the sun off, or in case we got more rain. I couldn’t find my umbrella and the boy said I shouldn’t take the time to look. I thought I might need it, though. I know the weather reports didn’t say anything about rain, but the way the weather’s been this year you never know; I’ve never seen so much rain as we’ve had this year!” She shrugged and plopped the hat back on her head.

      “Have you worn it much recently?” Smith asked.

      The policewoman was looking at him doubtfully. Buckley had stopped and turned back to listen.

      “This old thing?