Free Suspended In Dusk by Ramsey Campbell, John Everson, Wendy Hammer Page A

crying. “Everyone is dead. I thought you were dead, too.”
    “What do you mean by everyone?”
    “Look around. Open your ears, old man! No one is alive. The town is empty. Bodies everywhere you look. You can’t smell it?”
    “My nose ain’t what it used to be,” I said quietly but I could detect something spoiled. “I saw Chuck in his cruiser. Or, rather, I smelled what was left of him.”
    “I need to leave but I’m scared,” Mabel said. “I have nowhere to go.”
    “You can come and stay with us if you want.”
    Without another word she climbed into the passenger side of the pickup and we drove to my place.
     
    * * *
     
    My wife sat in silence while I told her what I’d seen and Mabel filled in the blanks.
    “Then we need to leave,” Sandra finally said. “But we can’t go tonight. Mabel can stay here, with us, and we’ll barricade the doors and windows. In the morning we can head to my sister’s and get some help.”
    “We should leave now,” Mabel yelled. “Before it gets dark.”
    I looked outside. We were only about an hour away from dusk. I didn’t want to be driving when the sun dropped and those things came out to hunt. “I guess they found someone else to do the picking,” I said.
    “What?” Mabel asked. I felt responsible but I wasn’t going to get her panicked. More than she was. But I knew I would turn myself in when we got to safety tomorrow.
    “You are both going to take sleeping pills and get to bed now. We’ll get up before dawn and head out. I’ll pack a few things and get the house in order.”
    “I won’t be able to sleep,” Mabel said.
    “You look like heck, girl,” my wife said. “You need your rest. If you’re tossing and turning and up all night you won’t be much help come daylight. Trust me on this.”
    I couldn’t argue with the logic. I’d felt great after a good night’s sleep. And running at night would be suicide.
    We set up Mabel in the unused bedroom I stored stuff in, but the bed was still good enough for one night once I got my boxes of lawn mower parts off of it.
    “Isn’t it odd she’s the only one still alive?” my wife asked me after Mabel took her pills and settled in. “She’s the only one. I think they found someone else to answer their summons, and Mabel did it. We’re the only two left and now she knows it.”
    “Then we both need to stand guard,” I said.
    My wife kissed my cheek and handed me my sleeping pills. “Go to bed.”
     
    * * *
     
    Through hazy eyes I saw the creatures in the room, dark and filled with teeth and claws, yellow irises seeming to float at me. Inside they were even scarier, a blob of darkness against the backdrop of the faded walls.
    I saw my wife, standing in the doorway, hall light behind her.
    “What are you doing?” I mumbled through a drugged haze.
    “I had to give them five names. You never told me how this worked. Never told me if I give ‘em more names each night they demand that many the next night. And the next. I ran out of people, honey. Mabel was a gift from God, though. Because if I don’t give them five by dusk, we’re next. Don’t you see? I had no choice. I wish I knew more people, though. My sister is going to be found in the morning, and they’ve promised me they will move onto another town as long as I help them. But I need to keep helping. They’ve been asleep in the woods for so long and now they’re so hungry.”
    She held up a yellow phone book. I noticed Sandra had been crying. “I just need to do some research every afternoon. But I’m sorry… I panicked tonight and thought of Junior.”
     

    A Woman of Disrepute
    Icy Sedgwick
     
    I always made a point to never visit artists while they were working on a painting but, given the chosen profession of a large number of my friends, it often happened that I had no choice in the matter if I wanted to see them. That desire for companionship in the face of tedium explained why I found myself standing in the doorway of