Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3)

by Patrick Logan

  The deputy wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. His muscles were strained from the awkward movement of dragging Alice backwards up a flight of stairs, and he was so, so tired; he’d gone at least twenty-five or more hours now without food or sleep.

  Sleep.

  He wondered if he would ever be able to sleep again after what he had seen.

  It was Jared who spoke first, his voice hoarse.

  “We need to get out of here.”

  Thank you for that penetrating glimpse into the obvious.

  Coggins looked at Jared; he looked as tired as Coggins felt. Then his eyes drifted to Alice slumped in the chair, eyes closed, and Oxford face down on the rug. They had tried their best to get the blood off the man, but without water it was a near impossible task; all they had managed to do was to streak his face, making it look like someone had rubbed earth-brown finger-paint on his cheeks. Then they had taken off his outer layers of clothing and tossed them in a sticky ball in the corner of the room. But they still didn’t even know where the blood had come from—they only knew that it wasn’t his. The original plan had been to leave this room, to look for one with more places to hide, but Oxford was like a dead weight, unable to respond in greater detail than veiled grunts and essentially unable to move.

  Coggins shook his head.

  Go? How can we go?

  “It won’t let us leave.”

  Jared raised an eyebrow, and Coggins shook his head again.

  “It won’t let us leave—at least, not out the front door.”

  Coggins didn’t know if this was true, but if they managed to escape—break a window, say, and jump to the snowy ground below—where would they go? They would just freeze to death, and despite the thing below them, he wasn’t sure that this was best alternative.

  Something washed over Jared’s face, something that was difficult to describe—despair, maybe? Disappointment?—and it was clear that the man was thinking the same thing.

  “What happened down there?” Jared asked after a long pause, his voice hoarse and dry.

  Again Coggins shook his head, but this time he offered no reply. When it was clear that the man needed some answer—any answer—Coggins finally spoke.

  “I don’t know.” He paused, trying to piece together in his mind what he had seen. “Alice hit him and it—it made him sick somehow.”

  Jared appeared to mull this over.

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.” Coggins shrugged. “That’s what I saw. I think it was gagging.”

  The two men stood a few feet apart in the stinking darkness without speaking for several minutes. When Coggins could take it no longer and finally opened his mouth to say something, a voice, one more delicate than either his or Jared’s, interrupted him.

  “I hit him with these,” Alice said, holding the bottle of clonazepam in her outstretched hand.

  2.

  Oxford Wasn’t Asleep, But he wasn’t fully awake, either. His limbs refused to respond and his mouth tasted like copper pennies. His head hurt. His back hurt. His mind hurt. He had seen things today that he would have previously thought impossible. The faces—he had seen the faces, the empty eye sockets staring at him. The smell of burning hair. The wetness of tissue slapping his face. The tackiness of the blood.

  But somehow, despite all of this insanity, his hearing was clear; clearer, in fact, than he could remember in a long time. It was as if the heavy footsteps had unblocked his ear canals like ammonia clearing one’s sinuses. And what he heard, on this day of impossible things, oddly seemed to make sense.

  “Think about it.”

  The deputy’s voice.

  “It makes sense. First, your brother tells us about how the thing touched the syringe full of heroin.”

  There was an awkward pause, as if the deputy anticipated an interjection. When none came, he continued.

  “And then Alice smacks it in the mouth with the pills.”

  Alice? Who’s Alice?

  Then he remembered the shape of a woman who had foolishly entered the house, and the thing had—Oxford grunted and banished the memory.

  “So? What do you think? It reacted to the drugs?”

  Jared now.

  “Dunno. I guess. What other options do we have?”

  “I checked the back balcony. That crazy Mrs. Wharfburn boarded it all up—windows, doors, everything. There is no way I can pry them off.”

  Boarded up? Why had she boarded up the house?

  Mrs. Wharfburn… Mrs. Wharfburn, who had been devoured and whose discarded skin looked like unsalted beef jerky, had boarded up her own house.

  There was another pause, which must have been preceded by an inaudible exchange of sorts, because the next sentence didn’t seem to follow logically. Oxford tried to lift his head from the carpet, but his body still refused to respond.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Jared, forlorn.

  Pause.

  “Do what? What the fuck are you guys talking about?”

  A woman’s voice this time; Alice, presumably.

  “We have one chance to get out of here,” Coggins said. “You saw how that thing got when just a little clonazepam got in its mouth. How many pills do you have left?”

  There was a rattling sound.

  “Maybe eight more?”

  “And I have this,” Jared added.

  “So, somehow, we are going to inject the thing, and—and—and what? Hope it ODs?”

  Alice again.

  “Brad, use your head. How will you ever get close enough to inject it? And what about the clonnys? Hand feed them? What the fuck, Brad! What if it doesn’t die?”

  “It can’t hear well, we know that; it has some fucked-up cauliflower ears. And if I could just get my shotgun—”

  “You would, what, shoot it? You tried that, remember? It didn’t fucking work!”

  “No, but I missed—”

  “You didn’t miss, I saw—”

  “I missed the, ugh, the, the fleshy parts. I saw blood where I hit the pink part, Alice. We need to act fast before there is nothing left—”

  “Nothing left of what? Of the fucking sheriff? Of your boss?”

  The woman’s voice suddenly escalated.

  “Of Dana?”

  This time when the deputy responded, his tone was softer.

  “It’s not Dana anymore, Alice. It may have been once, but not now. I—I just want to get out here.”

  Oxford’s head was swimming. The sheriff was that thing? It didn’t make sense… the thing with his mother’s eyes—the thing that had whispered his name so hauntingly, that had spoken to him with his mother’s voice—was this the sheriff?

  There was another long pause, during which Oxford felt himself fading again.

  “I’ll do it. I’ll go down there, strip like the man, and wait.”

  Jared again.

  “If it doesn’t work, you can probably run by and out the door, while it—while it—”

  It was bullshit, of course. Oxford had seen how fast the thing moved, and there was no way they could outrun it. Even if they managed to slip by and get outside, running in waist-high snowdrifts was not an option he wanted to entertain. And even if they got away, the call might bring them back.

  Oxford had had enough. Exacting all of his limited willpower, he managed to pull his head from the carpet. His eyes immediately fixated on the syringe clutched between his brother’s thumb and finger.

  “No,” Oxford said, feigning confidence. “I’ll go.”

  3.

  Jared Was Adamant That he went and not Oxford. Coggins was out; he was the only one who could handle the shotgun. And Alice? Well, asking her to do anything to the thing that was once like a father to her was not even a consideration. Besides, she was in rough shape—worse than Coggins, Jared, and maybe even Oxford.

  “I’ll go,” Jared pleaded, more so at Coggins than at Oxford. “It’s better if I go.”

  Deputy Bradley Coggins’ eyes
darted back and forth from Jared to Oxford’s blood-streaked face. It was clear to him which of the two should act as bait.

  Slowly but definitively, he shook his head.

  “Oxford,” Coggins said.

  There was no glee or gloating on Oxford’s face—just the opposite. The man swallowed hard.

  “Him?” Jared said desperately. “He’s a—he’s a—”

  Fuck up? Coggins thought, finishing the sentence in his mind.

  “He’ll go,” Coggins interrupted, doing Jared a favor by stopping him before he said something that he might regret.

  Like in the bathroom when Coggins had introduced himself—My name is Deputy Bradley Coggins—Jared let it go. The decision had been made, and he knew that Jared was secretly grateful that he wasn’t the one who had made it.

  Coggins turned back to Oxford, whose breathing had suddenly gotten shallow. He remembered the naked man standing in the center of the foyer, his leg and knee twisted awkwardly, blood leaking from a cut on his forehead. He had never gotten a good look at the man’s face, but when the man in this memory turned, he had Oxford’s wide eyes, and the same deplorable, blood-streaked expression.

  Come

  Coggins shook his head.

  This is fucking nuts.

  “Will he have enough time before—?”

  “I’ll wear the faces,” Oxford whispered, his voice dry, hoarse.

  Jared turned to look at his brother, anger suddenly flashing across his features.

  “What fucking faces, Oxford? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  Coggins readied himself to step between them, but Oxford just lowered his head and pointed over his shoulder with one trembling finger.

  “Those faces,” he said, his voice cracking.

  “The fucking towels?”

  Jared took three steps toward the pile of laundry at the back of the room. His fourth step, however, was a little slower, tentative. At that distance, they didn’t much look like towels; they were too heavy, too wet. Another step. And then another.

  With Coggins watching, Jared raised his leg to take a final step, but instead of moving forward, he suddenly backpedaled so quickly that Coggins had to get behind him to prevent him from tumbling right out of the room.

  “What?” Coggins asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the fear from his voice. “What is it?”

  Jared turned to him and swallowed hard.

  “They aren’t towels,” he gasped, “they’re skins.”

  4.

  It Was No Longer a nightmare to Alice; no, it had transcended nightmare long ago. It was more like a vision, perhaps, or a demented simulation. That made sense, in a way, what with the monster taking the face of someone she knew—the face of Sheriff Drew. This happened all the time in fantasies. And everything coming full circle, the man from the other night—Oxford, she now knew—and the heroin, everything coming here…well, that happened in delusions as well. At least, that’s what she thought happened—that’s what happened in movies.

  Alice blinked twice and her eyes focused on Jared wrapping the man that she had awoken beside in a layer of skin—human skin—to protect him long enough so that he could inject the monster with a lethal cocktail of clonazepam and heroin. Oxford had stripped down to his boxers; then they had covered him in blood, first wiping their hands on some of the underside of the skins, then all over his body, even his face. They had even reapplied some on top of the layer of dried blood that marked his narrow features.

  Although Deputy Coggins had initiated the search through the pile of thick, damp skins, he had only managed to flatten two of them before he was overwhelmed by revulsion and ran to the corner of the room to vomit.

  It was Jared who had eventually found one that looked like it had belonged to someone about Oxford’s height, and he had shaken it out like a damp sheet. The slit down the back was so precise that it was almost surgical, and Oxford had easily stepped inside the skin, his fingers pushed into its fingers like gloves that were just a bit too large. It was like walking into a hazmat suit, only this one lacked the convenience of a zipper; instead, after they had lined up the eyeholes, they had pulled it hard from behind, squishing it against Oxford’s nearly naked flesh, the blood they had covered him with helping it stick. The only thing they didn’t have to worry about were the feet; the skin ended around mid-shin, as if the beast had become anxious and had simply torn the feet out.

  It was horrific; it looked like Oxford had been swollen to the nth degree, all puffy and distended. The top part of the skin, the part pressed against Oxford’s forehead and scalp, was a matted mess of blond hair, thin and scraggly, clumps of it sticking to the face and scalp where they had accidentally smeared blood. Oxford’s entire body, save his shins and feet, were covered in the milky white membrane that clung tightly to him in some places—his hands, neck, and upper thighs—and hung awkwardly in others—his face, back, and the rumpled top of his head. Quite simply, it looked like he was wearing an ill-fitting human onesie.

  Alice gagged; it was a repulsive sight.

  “Give me the clonazepam,” Coggins demanded, his hand outstretched.

  Alice managed to draw her eyes away from the atrocity that Oxford had become, and stared up at the deputy with a strange, blank expression on her face. Slowly, almost robotically, she held out her hand, and Coggins snatched the container from it—cha cha cha.

  He was about to turn, but instead he stopped and stared at the bottle for a second. Then he opened it and peered inside, his lips mumbling with mental math.

  Without warning, he reached for Alice, drawing her in close with his wiry arms. The gesture surprised her, and at first she resisted, guilt of what had happened with Oxford coming at her in waves. He pulled harder and she relented, allowing herself to be sucked into his embrace. He smelled horrible, of course, they all did, but Alice didn’t care; she hugged him back. She started to tremble, and they stayed in each other’s arms for a good minute. Coggins was the one who eventually broke the embrace, kissing her gently on her sweaty forehead as they disengaged.

  “Take one,” he said loudly, allowing his hand to hover over hers for just a moment before turning to face Oxford and Jared.

  Oxford had turned sideways, and was subtly shrugging his shoulders, trying to realign his eyes with the eyeholes of the skin that he had stepped inside. Coggins didn’t wait for a response, and instead found the man’s swollen hand and dropped a pill into it. When Oxford failed to react, the deputy leaned in and said, “It’s in your hand.”

  Oxford nodded, or at least Coggins thought he nodded, and then brought the swollen palm to his face. When the man began to fumble trying to push the pill through the hole in the skin with puffy fingers, he had to look away for fear of vomiting again.

  Alice, on the other hand, laughed—she couldn’t help it.

  To her, Oxford looked like a blind man trying to figure out where to put the round peg.

  She laughed again, and this time Deputy Coggins turned and gave her a hard look. Even in the darkness, which she realized was actually becoming less suffocating as dawn approached, the fear in his eyes was obvious.

  Coggins took a set of keys out of his pocket and used one to crush the remaining clonazepam inside the container. It sounded to Alice like he was chewing dry cereal.

  “This is crazy. Fucking insane,” Jared said suddenly, shaking his head.

  Coggins paused.

  “Of course it’s crazy,” he replied out of the corner of his mouth before going back to breaking up the pills.

  “Maybe we should just go,” Jared continued, his voice almost a whisper.

  Coggins stopped what he was doing and turned to face Jared.

  “Go where?”

  Jared moved closer to his brother and tried to help him get the pill into his mouth.

  “Go—as in leave this place.”

  “You don’t think it knows we’re up here? You don’t think it’s waiting for us?” Coggins voice was louder now.

&nbs
p; “Maybe—I dunno. Maybe we can get by it.”

  There was a short pause.

  “Maybe it won’t get all of us.”

  Coggins ignored that last part; he wouldn’t let that happen to anyone else

  “So we get out; then what?”

  No answer.

  “If we leave here—if somehow we get past it—one of two things will happen: one, we freeze to death out in the cold. Or two, we fucking walk around out there in the fucking white and then wander our way back here.”

  Jared froze.

  “Come back? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard the voice.”

  Jared hesitated for a split second.

  “Yeah,” Coggins said, almost forlornly. “You hear it. I hear it.”

  He swept an arm across the room, hesitating only momentarily as his gesture passed Alice, who had a queer smirk on her face.

  “You hear it,” he repeated. “I hear it, Alice hears it. Oxford, too. Think about it. Why are we all here? Alice? Me? You? The sheriff? Why did you come here? You could have gone anywhere—”

  Jared turned away and went back to adjusting the skin. “We came here to look for help. Because, because—”

  “To this place? You came to this house for help? Why here of all places?

  Coggins took two steps across the room and grasped Jared’s shoulder. The man jumped, and when he turned to face the deputy again, Coggins could see that he had been crying. He loosened his grip and lowered his voice.

  “Is this the closest place, Jared? Did you come this way because it is the closest place to look for help?”

  “No—no I don’t think so… but—”

  “Why didn’t you go the other way, Jared? Why didn’t you split up? Why didn’t you go towards town? Stop a car on the road, maybe?”

  Jared took a page out of his younger brother’s book and looked down.

  “I—”

  Coggins squeezed his shoulder again and the terrified man looked up at him.

  “You came here because of it. Because it called to you… because—because—” He glanced around quickly before finishing in a harsh whisper, “—because of Come. For God’s sake, man, I’ve had this fucking monosyllabic mantra repeating over and over in my head—Come, Come, Come, Come—and you think after all that it is going to let us go, just let us walk out of here?”