Community by Graham Masterton

switched on his bedside lamp. It was about seven minutes after three.
    He switched his light back off and lay there in the darkness. The house was silent except for the soft, persistent rattling of the television antenna on the roof as it was shaken by the wind.
    Maybe if I just lie here, and empty my mind altogether, some of my memories will rise to the surface. How can I have forgotten so completely who I am, and where I live, and what my job is? I’m supposed to be a marine engineer, but I know nothing at all about marine engineering. I don’t even know what marine engineers actually do.
    How can I have failed to remember my own sister, when she says that we were so close? How come I couldn’t recognize my mother’s voice? Worst of all, how come I don’t really know who I am? Everybody else seems to be so sure that I’m Gregory Merrick, but I’m not sure at all.
    He repeated the name
Gregory Merrick
,
Gregory Merrick
, over and over, but it still didn’t sound like him.
    As he lay there, he had another of those very brief flashes of recollection. That female voice saying
you shouldn’t
– but in a blurry, stretched-out way, like a Doppler effect. And that elusive perfume.
    He lifted up his head and sniffed the cold bedroom air, but the perfume had gone.
    He drew back the bedcover and sat up. He stayed there for a few moments, still trying to keep his mind empty.
Think of nothing. Think of the wall. Think of the darkness. Think of the snow outside.
    He stood up and walked across to the window. The drapes were thick, dark green brocade, with patterns of leaves on them. He drew them back with a noisy scraping of brass rings and there was the snow-covered front yard, and the street beyond it. The moon was nearly full, and the sky was still completely clear, so that everything was lit up in a cold, bone-white light.
    What Michael saw outside made his scalp and his wrists tingle, as if he had touched a bare wire. Although the street was silent, it was far from deserted. Standing on the sidewalks and scattered across the road were at least a hundred people, maybe even more. They were all staring back at him, with their arms by their sides, not moving.
    Most of them were men, but he saw at least a dozen women. They were all wearing nightwear – a few of them in bathrobes, but the majority in pajamas and nightshirts and nightgowns. As far as Michael could tell, their ages ranged from their early twenties to sixty or seventy or even older.
    But what the hell were they doing out there, in the middle of the night? The temperature couldn’t be higher than minus five, and it probably felt colder with the wind-chill factor. Yet there they all stood, completely still, their pajamas and nightgowns rippling in the wind.
    Michael stepped back from the window. In the darkness of his bedroom, he wasn’t sure if they could see him or not. But even if they couldn’t, they continued to stare in his direction, and not one of them showed any signs of moving.
    He thought of waking up Isobel, but then he didn’t want to frighten her. He was disturbed enough himself, even though it didn’t look as if any of these people meant to do him any harm. They weren’t armed, and they weren’t making any moves toward the house. They were simply standing there, utterly silent.
    No, he thought. The only thing to do was to go out there and ask them what the hell they were doing. After all, there was no way that he would be able to get back to sleep, knowing they were still gathered outside the house.
    He opened his closet and took out his thick blue sweater and his khaki corduroy pants. He also sat on the bed and pulled on a pair of thick white socks.
    As quietly as he could, he went out into the hallway and took down the navy blue overcoat which the clinic had given him, and put on his Timberland boots. He went right up close to the front door and peered through the hammered glass window in