by Dan Wells
His breath came out in short, hazy puffs—not the long, lazy clouds of the other people on the street. That meant he was breathing rapidly, which meant he was nervous. Was he looking for a victim?
The bus came and went, and he didn’t get on. He was watching something across the street—across from him, which meant it was on the same side as me. I looked around—the Twain Station bookstore was on the left of the burger joint, and Earl’s Hunting Supply Store was on the right. The drifter was looking at the hunting store, which was a little ominous in itself. The street out front had a couple of cars, one of which looked familiar. Who did I know with a white Buick?
When Mr. Crowley came out of the hunting store laden with fishing supplies, I knew why the car looked so familiar—it spent most of its time fifty feet from my house. Forcing yourself not to think about people made even simple details like that hard to remember.
When the drifter stood up and jogged across the street toward Mr. Crowley, I knew the situation had become very important, very suddenly. I wanted to hear this. I went outside, knelt down by my bike, and made a show of pretending to unlock the chain. I hadn’t even chained it to anything, but it was next to some pipes and I figured neither Crowley nor the drifter was paying close attention. I was a good thirty feet away from them—if I was lucky, they wouldn’t pay any attention to me at all.
“Fishing?” said the drifter. He looked like he was about thirty-five or forty, weathered by wind and age. He said something else, but I was too far away to hear it. I turned my head to get a better angle.
“Ice fishing,” said Mr. Crowley, holding up a chisel. “Lake froze over a week or two ago, and I figure it’s safe to walk on by now.”
“You don’t say,” said the drifter. “I used to go ice fishing all the time back in the day. I thought it was a lost art.”
“A fellow fisherman?” asked Mr. Crowley, perking up. “Not too many people around here are into ice fishing—Earl here had to special order the new auger for me. As cold as it is today, and with the wind picking up, I bet there won’t even be skaters—I’ll have the whole lake to myself.”
“Is that so?” asked the drifter. I frowned—there was something in his voice that bothered me. Was he going to rob Crowley’s house while he was out fishing?
Was he going to follow Crowley to the lake and kill him?
“You busy?” asked Mr. Crowley. “It gets awful lonely on that lake by yourself, and I could do with the company. I’ve got an extra pole.”
Crowley, you idiot. Taking this guy anywhere is a stupid idea. Maybe Crowley has Alzheimers.
“That’s awfully kind of you,” said the drifter, “though I’d hate to impose.”
What was Mr. Crowley thinking? I thought about jumping up to warn him, but I stopped myself. I was probably just imagining things; this guy’s probably fine.
Though Mr. Crowley was a perfect match for the victim profile—an older white male with a large build.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Mr. Crowley. “Climb in. You have a hat?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then we’ll swing by and get you one on our way out,” said Crowley, “and a bit of extra lunch. A friend to fish with is worth five dollars, easy.”
They climbed into his car and drove away. I almost got up to warn him again, but I knew where they were going—and I knew that they’d delay for a while buying food and a hat. It would be a gamble, but I might be able to make it out there before them and hide. I wanted to see what happened.
I made it to the most well-used stretch of lake in just half an hour, where the slope down from the road to the shore was more gradual, and you could walk right out to the edge. There was no sign of Mr. Crowley or his dangerous passenger, or of anybody else for that matter. We’d have the lake to ourselves. I hid my bike in a snow bank on the south side of the clearing, and crouched in a small stand of trees to the north. If Mr. Crowley actually went through with it, this is where he would come. I sat down to wait.
The lake was frozen, as Crowley had expected, and dusted with grainy white snow. On the far side, a low hill rose up, tall only by contrast to the flat expanse of the lake. Wind whipped across them both, spirals of air made visible by the snow within it, eddies and swirls and drill-bit tornadoes. I crouched in the shadows and froze as the wind made faces in the sky.
Exposure to nature—cold, heat, water—is the most dehumanizing way to die. Violence is passionate and real—the final moments as you struggle for your life, firing a gun or wrestling a mugger or screaming for help, your heart pumps loudly and your body tingles with energy; you are alert and awake and, for that brief moment, more alive and human than you’ve ever been before. Not so with nature.
At the mercy of the elements the opposite happens: your body slows, your thoughts grow sluggish, and you realize just how mechanical you really are. Your body is a machine, full of tubes and valves and motors, of electrical signals and hydraulic pumps, and they function properly only within a certain range of conditions. As temperatures drop, your machine breaks down. Cells begin to freeze and shatter; muscles use more energy to do less; blood flows too slowly, and to the wrong places. Your senses fade, your core temperature plummets, and your brain fires random signals that your body is too weak to interpret or follow. In that state you are no longer a human being, you are a malfunction—an engine without oil, grinding itself to pieces in its last futile effort to complete its last meaningless task.
I heard a car approach and turn off into the clearing. I turned my head imperceptibly to watch from the corner of my eye, keeping myself hidden in the trees, and recognized Crowley’s white Buick. The drifter got out first and stared darkly at the lake, until the other door opened and Crowley coughed.
“I haven’t been ice fishing in an age,” said the stranger, glancing back at Mr. Crowley. “Thanks again for letting me tag along.”
“Not a problem at all,” said Mr. Crowley, walking back to the trunk. He handed the stranger a fishing pole and a bucket full of tools, nets, an ice auger, and a pair of folding stools, then closed the trunk. He was carrying a pole of his own, and a small cooler. “I keep two of everything, just in case,” he said, smiling. “There’s enough hot chocolate in here to keep us both warm and happy.”
“That lunch filled me right up,” said the drifter, “don’t worry about it.”
“Out here we’re partners,” said Crowley, “what’s mine is yours, and yours is mine.” He grinned.
“What’s yours is mine,” said the stranger, and I felt the sense of danger rise. What was Mr. Crowley doing? Picking up a drifter like this could be deadly, even if you didn’t bring them out alone into the middle of nowhere—even if there wasn’t a psycho killer on the loose.
I looked at the drifter’s hands for any evidence of claw-like weapons, but they were normal. Maybe he wasn’t the killer after all. Either way, I was dying of curiosity—if he was the killer, I wanted to see how he did it.
I frowned then, wondering at myself. Was I really more interested in watching the killer than in saving Crowley’s life? I knew I shouldn’t be—if I were a normal, empathetic person, I’d jump up and save Crowley’s life. But I wasn’t.
So I watched.
Mr. Crowley began walking carefully down the slope to the shore, and the stranger followed closely. I shrank back into my shelter of trees, quietly, trying to stay as small and as hidden as possible.
“Wait up a minute,” said the stranger, “that coffee is finally catching up to me. I need to take a leak.” He set down his bucket and balanced the pole carefully across it. “Won’t be a minute.” He fled back up the slope and I cringed, terrified that he would come to my trees to pee, but he went to the other stand on the far side of the car.
My bike was right there. Surely he would see it.
The man delayed just long enough in choosing a good spot that I started to get suspicious. I glanced at Crowley, and guessed that he was suspicious, too. Nervous lines creased his face, and he
glanced back out at the ice as if it were a giant clock, and he was late for something. He coughed painfully.
I expected any minute for the drifter to see my bike and call out, or to pull a chain saw out of the trees and leap down the bank with a howl, but nothing happened. He found a spot he liked, stood still, and after a long pause, zipped up and turned around.
He must have been practically tripping over my bike. Why didn’t he say anything? Maybe he’d seen it, and knew I was here, and was biding his time carefully until he could kill Crowley and me together.
“I gotta say again that this is awfully nice of you,” said the drifter. “I’m mighty indebted to you, sir, and I don’t know how I can ever repay you.” He laughed. “Nicest thing I have is this hat, and you’re the one who bought it.”
“We’ll think of something,” said Crowley, and took off his glove to scratch the stubble of his beard. “If nothing else, I’ll just claim credit for all the good fish.” He smiled broadly, then coughed again.
“That cough sounds like it’s getting worse,” said the stranger.
“Just a little problem with my lungs,” said Crowley, turning back to the frozen lake. “It’ll clear up soon.” He took a step onto the ice, probing it with one foot.
The drifter reached the bottom of the slope, and stood for a moment by his bucket of tools. He reached down to pick it up, then stopped, glanced quickly back at the road, and reached his hand into his coat. When he pulled it back out he had a knife—not a switchblade or a hunting knife, just a long kitchen knife covered with dirt and rust. It looked like he’d stolen it from a junkyard.
“I’m thinking we ought to head out that way,” said Crowley, pointing northeast. “Wind’s just as bad everywhere, but that’s the deepest part of the lake, and not too far from the head of the river. We’ll get a little more current underneath us, and that makes for better fishing.”
The drifter stepped forward, his right hand tight around the knife and his left hand out to the side for balance. He was just an arm’s length from Crowley’s back; another step and he could strike a killing blow.
Crowley scratched his chin again. “I’d like to thank you for coming out here with me.” Cough. “We’ll make a good team, you and I.”
The drifter took a step closer.
“You have no family,” said Crowley, “and I can barely breathe.” Cough. “Between the two of us, I figure we make just about one whole person.”
Wait—what?
The drifter paused, as perplexed as I was, and in that split second Crowley turned around and lashed out with his ungloved hand—longer now, somehow, and darker, his fingernails lengthening impossibly into sharp ivory claws. The first swipe knocked the knife from the startled man’s hand, spinning it straight past my stand of trees, and the second backhanded the stranger across the face, knocking him down into the cushion of snow. The drifter struggled to his feet, but Crowley dropped his cooler and pole and leapt on the man, roaring like a beast. Another claw tore its way out of Crowley’s other glove, shredding it as it grew, and both claws raked across the stranger’s upraised arm, slicing flesh from bone. The man was hidden from my view now, deep in the snow, but I heard him cry out—a formless cry of pain and shock. Crowley roared back with a mouth full of gleaming, needlelike teeth. Two vicious strikes later, and all was silent.
Mr. Crowley crouched over the body in a cloud of steam, his arms too long, and his unearthly talons bright with blood. His head had grown bulbous and dark, his ears were pointed like blades. His jaw was unnaturally low, and bristled with teeth. He panted heavily, and as I watched he slowly coalesced back into the form I knew—his arms and hands shortened, his claws shrank back to become regular fingernails, and his head deflated and reformed. A moment later, it was plain old Mr. Crowley again, as normal as could be. If not for the blood stains on his clothes, no one would have ever guessed what he had become, or what he had done. He coughed and pulled the tattered glove from his left hand, dropping it wearily on the ground.
I sat in shock, my face bitten by the wind and my legs warm with my own urine. I didn’t even remember peeing.
Mr. Crowley was a monster.
Mr. Crowley was the monster.
I was too scared to think about hiding—I simply sat and watched, freezing and nauseated. Crowley extended his right hand once more into a claw and began cutting away the stranger’s layers of clothing.
“Try to kill me,” he muttered. “I bought you a hat.” He reached down with both hands and grimaced, and I heard a hideous cracking—one, two, three, four-five-six—a string of shattered ribs. He stooped lower, out of my sight, and stood up a moment later clutching a pair of shapeless, bloody bags.
Lungs.
Slowly, Mr. Crowley began unbuttoning his coat . . . then his first flannel shirt . . . then his second . . . then his third. Soon his chest was bared to the cold and he gritted his teeth, breathing heavily and closing his eyes. He switched the ragged lungs into his human left hand, brought his demonic claw up to his belly, and sliced himself open just below the ribs. I gasped, just as a faint grunt escaped between Crowley’s clenched teeth; it didn’t look like he’d heard me. Blood poured from his open belly and he staggered one step, but quickly righted himself.
I felt past shock now—too numbed by what I had seen to do anything but stare.
Mr. Crowley coughed again, wracked with pain, and shoved the lungs desperately into the gash in his abdomen. He fell to his knees, his face wrenched with pain, and I watched as the last bit of lung disappeared into him, as if drawn up by something inside. His eyes opened suddenly wide, wider than I thought possible, and his mouth moved fearfully in a futile, noiseless gasp for air. Something dark oozed out of his wound and he reached for it quickly, pulling out another pair of lungs—similar to the first but black and sickly, like the lungs in a cancer commercial. The black lungs hissed as they slid from his open wound, and he dropped them on the stranger’s dead body below. He paused there a moment, suspended in the utter silence of asphyxiation, motionless and airless, then gasped loudly and abruptly, like a diver emerging from a pool, desperate for air. He took three more breaths like that, huge and hungry, then began to breathe at a calmer, more measured pace. His right hand shrank back to normal, shifting somehow from monster to human, and he clutched his open wound with both hands. The hole sealed up, closing itself like a zipper. Half a minute later, his chest was whole again, scarless and white.
The branches above me gave way suddenly, dropping a clump of snow on the ground around my hiding place. I bit my tongue to keep from screaming in alarm, and threw myself on my back in the hollow between the trunks. I could no longer see Crowley, but I heard him jump to his feet; I imagined him tensed and ready to fight—ready to kill anyone who’d witnessed even a part of his actions. I held my breath as he walked toward my trees, but he didn’t stop or look in. He stepped past and stooped to look for something in the snow—the discarded knife, I assumed—and after a minute he straightened up and walked to his car. I heard the trunk click open, and a rustle of plastic, then the door slammed shut and he walked back to the corpse, his footsteps even and deliberate.
I’d just watched a man die. I’d just watched my next-door neighbor kill him. It was too much to process; I felt myself start to shiver uncontrollably, though whether it was from cold or from fear I couldn’t tell. I tried to clamp down on my legs to keep them from shaking the undergrowth and giving me away.
I’m not sure how long I lay there in the snow, listening to him work, and praying that he wouldn’t find me. Snow was in my shoes, pants, and shirt; it had crept down through my collar and up from my belt, all of it ice cold—so cold it burned. Outside, plastic rustled, bones thumped, and something squelched wetly, over and over. Eons later I heard Crowley dragging something heavy, followed by a grunt of effort and the click of his boots on the ice of the lake.
Two steps. Three steps. Four steps. When he reached ten steps I allowed myself to lean up—ever so slowly—and peer
out of the trees. Crowley was out on the frozen water, a black plastic sack flung over his shoulders and the ice saw dangling from his belt. He walked slowly and carefully, testing his steps and trudging through the bitter wind. His silhouette grew smaller and smaller, and strong gusts heavy with shards of ice raced around him in fury, as if nature were angry at what he had done—or some darker power was pleased. Half a mile out, his lonely outline disappeared completely into the wind and snow, and he was gone.
I clambered awkwardly out of the trees, my legs like jelly and my mind racing. I knew I needed to cover my tracks somehow, and snapped off a low-hanging pine branch. I walked backward toward my bike, brushing away my footprints as I went—I’d seen an Indian do it in one of those old John Wayne movies. It wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do. When I reached my bike, I pulled it up and raced around the far side of the trees, hoping Crowley wouldn’t see my footprints that far away from the scene of the killing. I reached the road and jumped on, pedaling madly in order to reach town before he returned and passed me in his car.
Around me the pine trees were dark as demons’ horns, and the setting sun on the oaks turned the bare branches red as bloody bones.
8
I slept very little that night, haunted by what I had seen at the lake. Mr. Crowley had killed a man—killed him, just like that. One moment he was alive, screaming and fighting for his life, and the next moment he was nothing but a sack of meat. Life, whatever it was, had evaporated into nothing.
I longed to see it again, and I hated myself for that.
Mr. Crowley was a monster of some kind—a beast in human form who seemed to absorb the lungs of the man he had killed. I thought about Ted Rask’s missing leg, Jeb Jolley’s kidney, and Dave Bird’s arm—had Crowley absorbed those parts as well? I imagined him built entirely out of pieces of the dead; Dr. Frankenstein and his monster rolled into one unholy killer. But where had it started? What had he been before the first piece was stolen? I saw again a vision of dark, leathery skin, a bulbous head, and long, scythe-like claws. I was not religious, and knew next to nothing about the occult or the supernatural, but the word that leapt to mind was “demon.” The Son of Sam had called the monsters in his life demons. I figured if it was good enough for the Son of Sam, it was good enough for me.