Poe's children: the new horror : an anthology - By Peter Straub Page 0,163

in his apartment came the sound of a child weeping in either pain or despair. As soon as Little Red heard the sound, he knew that this was what had awakened him: a dream had rippled and broken beneath its pressure. He had been pulled upward, drawn up into the cold.

It came again, this time it seemed from the kitchen: a hiccup of tears, a muffled sob.

“Anybody there?” asked Little Red in a blurry voice. Wearily, he turned his head toward the kitchen and peered at the nothing he had expected to see. Of course no distraught child sat weeping in his kitchen. Little Red supposed that it had been two or three years since he had even seen a child.

He dropped his head back into the pillowy comfort of the recliner and heard it again—the cry of a child in misery. This time it seemed not to come from the kitchen but from the opposite end of his apartment, either the bathroom or the front room that served as storage shed and bedroom. Although Little Red understood that the sound was a hallucination and the child did not exist, that the sound should seem to emanate from the bedroom disturbed him greatly. He kept his bedroom to himself. Only in extreme cases had he allowed a visitor entrance to this most private of his chambers.

He closed his eyes, but the sound continued. False, false perception! He refused to be persuaded. There was no child; the misery was his own, and it derived from exhaustion. Little Red nearly arose from his command post to unplug his telephone, but his body declined to cooperate.

The child fell silent. Relieved, Little Red again closed his eyes and folded his hands beneath the rough warmth of the woolen blanket. A delightful rubbery sensation overtook the length of his body, and his mind lurched toward a dream. A series of sharp cries burst like tracers within his skull, startling him back into wakefulness.

Little Red cursed and raised his head. He heard another flaring outcry, then another, and the sound subsided back into pathetic weeping. “Go to sleep!” he yelled, and at that moment realized what had happened: a woman, not a child, was standing distressed on the sidewalk outside his big front window, crying loudly enough to be audible deep within. A woman sobbing on West 55th Street at 3:30 in the morning, no remedy existed for a situation like that. He could do nothing but wait for her to leave. An offer of assistance or support would earn only rebuff, vituperation, insults, and the threat of criminal charges. Nothing could be done, Little Red advised himself. Leave well enough alone, stay out. He shut his eyes and waited for quiet. At least he had identified the problem, and sooner or later the problem would take care of itself. Tired as he was, he thought he might fall asleep before the poor creature moved on. He might, yes, for he felt the gravity of approaching unconsciousness slip into his body’s empty spaces despite the piteous noises floating through his window.

Then he opened his eyes again and swung his legs from beneath the blanket’s embrace and out of the chair, for he was Little Red and could not do otherwise. The woman’s misery was intolerable, how could he pretend not to hear it? Thinking to peek around the side of the front window’s shade, Little Red pushed himself out of the command center and marched stiff-legged into the toilet.

As if the woman had heard his footsteps, the noise cut off. He paused, took a slow step forward. Just let me get a look at you, he thought. If you don’t look completely crazy, I’ll give you whatever help you can accept. In a moment he had passed through the bathroom and was opening the door to his bedroom, the only section of the apartment we have not as yet seen.

The weeping settled into a low, steady, fearful wail. The woman must have heard him, he thought, but was too frightened to leave the window. “Can’t be as bad as that,” he said, making his slow way down the side of the bed toward the far wall, where an upright piano covered half of the big window. Now the wailing seemed very close at hand. Little Red imagined the woman huddled against his building, her head bent to his window. Her mechanical cries pierced his heart. He almost felt like going outside immediately.

Little Red reached the right