Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3)

by Patrick Logan

  What happened to Mama was even more confusing and disorienting, and his mind had put up a wall to shield himself from the brunt of the devastation. After what he had seen—had facilitated—happen to Oxford, he was numb to death. Jared supposed that he should have seen it coming—her apathy, the way she was so disconnected from what was happening around them—but he knew that it was game over when Oxford had told him that Mama had asked him, his junkie of a younger brother, to take care of him. They were the exact same words she had uttered to Jared. Ludicrous. He knew then that she had lost it, had been driven mad from the situation—from the call. From Oot’-keban.

  As before, as with the many times that all of these feelings bombarded him, Jared pushed them away. He knew that he would have to deal with them someday, but not now—and definitely not all at once.

  “Later,” he whispered.

  Then he took a deep breath and stepped into Corina’s hospital room.

  The girl was sleeping, her face a mask of peace and comfort—medically induced, no doubt. Jared walked to the side of her bed and brushed a lock of blond hair from her face. Then he tucked her right arm that had fallen from beneath the white sheet back onto the bed, making sure that the heartrate monitor was still correctly positioned on her finger. She looked older somehow, as if she had gone from twelve to twenty-four overnight. It wasn’t her features—those were still as smooth as a sheet of unbaked filo pastry—but it was something else, something he just couldn’t place. Or maybe it was just him, his perspective on everything having changed. His own body was old and tired, like an eighty-year-old instead of someone in his late thirties, and his joints ached as if they had frozen during the storm and were still struggling to thaw. The idea of thawing reminded him of the way Oxford’s partially digested head had looked, soft and mushy and—

  Stop it! Not now!

  Jared felt beads of sweat begin to form on his brow. He tried hard to force the horrible images away, but they lingered like a foul smell. His only hope was that his brother had been dead before he had been skinned. Clonazepam and heroin—enough to kill a horse. But enough to kill an addict?

  Stop it!

  Jared’s eyes fell from Corina’s face and continued down her body. His vision was starting to get watery.

  You killed him. You could have—

  Corina’s right leg lay flat, but her left was hoisted by a strap wrapped just below her buttock and tethered to a mechanical hook that arced down from the ceiling.

  —you could have saved him. All you had to do was tell Deputy Coggins to go down there.

  Jared wiped at his brow and blinked hard.

  You didn’t even need to tell the deputy to go, you just had to let him.

  Jared looked at the heavily wrapped stump halfway down Corina’s thigh. It was so strange, having the leg end like that just before it reached the knee. Jared had to resist the urge to actually lean down and look under the hanging limb to make sure it wasn’t folded beneath—an old stage trick.

  “Why are you crying?”

  The voice startled Jared, and he bolted upright and took a step backward. He had been so lost in his own head, so trapped in a horrible reverie, that he had forgotten he was not alone. Corina was staring at him, a curious expression on her face.

  He breathed deep in an attempt to compose himself.

  “It’s just—”

  —I killed your uncle, my brother. We could have come up with another plan, we could have all escaped alive.

  Jared shook his head.

  But we did have a plan, a good one—it’s Oxford’s fault for fucking it up. It’s Oxford’s fault…

  “—it’s just that I miss Oxford. And your dad; I miss Cody, too.”

  Jared didn’t know if it was okay to mention her father given Corina’s fragile state, but, shit, he was fragile, too.

  Thankfully, the girl seemed unfazed.

  “I miss Henri,” she said, her eyes looking away for a brief moment before returning to his.

  Jared wiped the tears from his face.

  “Do you know where they might have gone?”

  It was a stupid thing to ask, but Jared was worried that if he didn’t say anything, the conversation would go to a place that neither of them wanted. In the end, it didn’t matter—it went there anyway.

  Something flashed across the young girl’s eyes—something dark, like a shadow—and for a moment her soft, almost affected expression seemed to harden. In an instant, Jared knew exactly what thought had crept into Corina’s head—because the same thing floated through his.

  “No,” he stated calmly, “they did not—”

  Corina’s eyes grew wide, and he knew then that just like her amputated leg, her wounded mind would never fully recover.

  Come.

  “Oot’-keban,” she whispered.

  Jared furrowed his brow and took an aggressive step toward her bed.

  “No,” he said forcefully.

  Corina paid his advance no mind. Her gaze drifted upward until finally fixated on a point on the ceiling, or perhaps beyond.

  “Oot’-keban,” she whispered again, quieter this time.

  “No,” he almost shouted. “Oot’-keban is no more, Corina.”

  Jared paused, fighting the urge to recall the horrific green beast that had flooded Mrs. Wharfburn’s front hallway with gallons of stinking fluid.

  “It’s gone.”

  She shook her head violently.

  “It’s never gone,” she whispered. “You didn’t get it all…I can still hear it.”

  “Corin—”

  “You forgot about the animals—the animal skins, Jared. It’s growing its palil and it’s still coming.”

  Corina’s eyes slowly rolled back in her head.

  The animal skins?

  When she spoke again, her voice was barely audible.

  “It’s not dead… it’s not dead… it’s not dead…”

  She repeated those three words over and over again until Jared thought that he too—like his mother before him—would go mad. He leaned over her and grasped her shoulders with the intention of shaking her out of her trance when her eyes suddenly flipped forward.

  Then Corina screamed.

  3.

  It Was Cold Out—still cold out—but Deputy Bradley Coggins barely noticed. It was as if his previous exposure had made him impervious to this slightly milder weather; as if his body now ran permanently at ninety-six degrees instead of north of ninety-eight.

  It didn’t take him long to find the dog, even with the huge snowbanks that still blanketed the landscape.

  He parked his civilian car—damn, it felt good not having to maneuver the narrow and only partially plowed streets with his big police cruiser—very close to where he had parked his police car so many days ago during the blizzard. Then he just traced his way through the still trampled snow until he reached a particularly wide depression, not far from the western edge of the forest.

  The blood was gone, dried up, sucked up, or just evaporated, but the dog was lying there just as Coggins remembered: on its side, its long tongue hanging out from its now very dry and very thin lips, and those two red holes, one on its neck and one on its abdomen, as bright as ever. Thankfully, the cold had kept the scavengers away—kept everything away, it appeared, including decay. He found his bag beside the dog, too, which was strange, because with all that had happened, he hadn’t even remembered forgetting it here.

  Coggins breathed deeply before crouching down, not because he was afraid of any potential smell—God knows, his sense of smell had never been the same since the horrible stench that had immersed Mrs. Wharfburn’s house—but to steady himself, to stop the recollection of the series of events that had pretty much started here with this dog, this pooch. A deep breath and then he bent, reaching out and grabbing the dark green—Come—heart-shaped collar. Although it was frozen to the dog, it unglued itself from the fur with a sharp tug. The sight of the animal’s fur, so completely dry and frozen, was in stark co
ntrast to the wolf skin that they had found in Mrs. Wharfburn’s foyer, yet it triggered the memory nonetheless. He remembered all the animals he had seen, and the many more that Jared had told him about: the deer, the bear, the wolves. And all those animals? Where had they gone? With their lifeless eyes and unwavering determination, it was clear that they too had heard the call—had heard the thing summon them, just as it had summoned himself, Alice, and the Lawrence family. But where were their skins? He couldn’t remember seeing them in the room that they had found Oxford and there had just been the one wolf pelt in the foyer; but, truth be told, he hadn’t looked that closely before setting them alight. They could have been in the pile, mixed in with—

  Coggins shook his head, trying to focus. After a deep breath, he bent closer to the dog before him.

  “Philomena Mansour,” he said out loud. “Funny name for a dog.”

  His smirk grew into a grin and then he laughed, both of which surprised him. God, it had been so long since he had laughed. But it didn’t feel good—it felt wrong.

  Coggins read the line beneath the name.

  “1608 Market Road.”

  Coggins wrapped the frozen carcass in a thick wool blanket. It was surprisingly heavy, maybe forty or fifty pounds, but the burn in his sinewy biceps felt good—just being able to feel felt good; really good.

  * * *

  “Philomena?”

  “Yes?”

  The woman was cautious, holding the door open only a couple of inches. No one had chain locks anymore, save dingy, dilapidated apartments, but he thought that if this woman had had one, it would have been tightly fastened. Coggins didn’t blame her; he wasn’t oblivious to the rumors going around about what had happened to Sheriff Drew and a dozen or so other Askergan County residents during the storm. The irony was that as outlandish as these rumors were, they were far from the truth, which in this case was much, much worse. Still, it was enough to put more than half of the population of just over a thousand people in a state of unease.

  Coggins politely took a step backward.

  “Philomena,” he began, “I’m from the sheriff’s department.”

  The woman raised an eyebrow and looked behind him at his small Nissan. Coggins grimaced, now regretting not driving the cruiser.

  “Philomena,” he repeated, “I’m Deputy Bradley Coggins, and unfortunately I have some bad news.”

  The woman’s round face quickly darted back to Coggins’.

  “Yes?” she asked, her voice softer now, concerned.

  “I found your dog.”

  The air between them suddenly became so uncomfortable that Coggins was at a loss as to what to do next. Unbelievably, he found himself turning and picking up the dog still wrapped in the wool blanket and holding it out to the grief-stricken woman like some sort of pirate bounty.

  Philomena’s eyes went wide when she spotted the dog’s snout peeking out from the dark fabric. Almost immediately, her face melted and the tears came.

  “Darwin,” she cried, “oh, Darwin.”

  “It was an accident,” Coggins stammered, but when the woman threw the door wide and wrapped her arms around the still frozen carcass, he lost his train of thought. With her not-so-small frame now pushing down on the already heavy dog, he had to lean backwards to steady himself and avoid toppling. He was reluctant to just give her the animal, as it looked too heavy for her to hold, and despite his discomfort, it would be worse to have this woman collapse under the weight of her dead dog and twist an ankle.

  This is not going the way it was supposed to. Stupid Brad, stupid Cletus Oslo Hardy, how the hell did you think this was going to go?

  He took another step backward, grimacing at their combined weight.

  Why are you even here, Brad?

  But he knew the answer to that one.

  It took Coggins a moment to notice that Philomena was looking up at him, her round, tear-streaked face glistening in the bright winter sun like a Christmas ornament.

  “An accident?” she whimpered.

  Coggins opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it again.

  “Was it a hunter?”

  Again, Coggins remained silent.

  “It was a hunter; I know it was a hunter.”

  The woman turned back to her dog and stroked his frozen muzzle.

  “Yes,” Deputy Bradley Coggins heard himself whisper hoarsely. “It was a hunter.”

  Closure; that’s why I’m here.

  Coggins started to cry.

  4.

  “You All Right, Coggins?”

  There was a long pause, and Deputy Paul White checked twice to make sure that the green light on his walkie-talkie was still lit.

  Finally, a static-filled voice on the other end answered.

  “Yeah.”

  There was a shorter pause this time.

  “Just tired. What’s up?”

  Deputy White hesitated before addressing the reason for his call.

  “Well, I know you are off for a bit, but I know you were part of the search and I thought you should hear it from me first.”

  Another pause.

  “They found the girl and her father.”

  Silence.

  “Brad? You there?”

  Paul turned to look for his new temporary partner—Deputy Andrew Williams, who was collecting some of the larger branches stuck in Mrs. Wharfburn’s lawn.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Remember what I said! Stay away from the house!”

  The man, deputized only two days ago, was inching his way closer to the charred open doorway, obviously trying to get a peek inside. The entire front porch was a blackened, burnt mess, and the foyer was much the same. He himself had only been inside once, and even then only briefly. It looked like the fire had started in the foyer, but there was also fire damage to one of the rooms upstairs. It was strange, the fire seeming to start in two places at the same time, and it just didn’t jive with Coggins’ story. If it hadn’t been for the wind, the whole house would have gone up. Coggins clearly wasn’t telling him the whole truth and nothing but—but that would come in time. If there was one thing he knew about Deputy Bradley Coggins, it was that the man had a penchant for telling tall tales—the truth would come out. White just wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  “The yellow tape is there for a reason! Not safe!”

  Deputy Williams grumbled something before making his way begrudgingly toward the center of the lawn.

  The fire was probably a blessing, as whatever had happened in there—whatever had happened to Sheriff Drew—couldn’t have been pretty. Mrs. Drew had come down to the station as she had promised, and the woman, stronger than he, Deputy Coggins, and the sheriff combined, had actually taken over Alice’s duties—when she wasn’t in the hospital spending time with the girl she practically called a daughter, that is. White was grateful. With the sheriff and Alice gone and Coggins on leave, it was good to have a face around that he recognized—even if he refused to share what little he knew of what had happened with the woman, despite her near constant requests.

  The radio crackled.

  “Bad news?”

  It sounded more like a statement than a query. Paul took a deep breath.

  “Yeah—good and bad.”

  Deputy White made his way toward a massive branch that was stuck in the ground like a spear, roughly ten feet from the front porch.

  “They found them on the ice, nearly two miles from shore. They must have gotten lost—wandered onto the ice and lost their bearings. The man was without his jacket, lying face down on the ice—frozen. They found—” Paul’s voice hitched.

  Damn.

  “They found the girl a hundred meters from him, buried beneath her dad’s large coat. And—”

  A long pause ensued as his emotions surged, and Paul distracted himself by moving the stick back and forth with his one free hand. Surprisingly, it seemed well rooted and barely budged even with a sharp tug from his meaty palm. He looked skyward, trying to force the
tears away.

  “And goddamn it, Brad, she was alive.”

  “Shit.”

  Relief.

  Paul nodded.

  “Frostbitten, terrified, but alive.”

  Another pause, one that was drawn out for so long that Paul was about to put the talkie back in its holster before Coggins spoke.

  “Hey, White?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How did you know the answer to the Gretzky trivia?”

  The question caught him off guard, and he took a moment to answer.

  “Heard it on the radio a few days before you asked me.”

  There was a clicking noise.

  “Fucking radio,” Coggins said, and Paul couldn’t help but crack a small smile. It was just like Coggins to come say something inappropriate at a time like this.

  Deputy White pulled the stick a little harder this time, and it moved a quarter inch to the left. When he let go, it unexpectedly remained in that position instead of bouncing back.

  “Get some rest,” he said. “We need you back soon, Brad. This town needs us—needs the good ones.”

  His use of the sheriff’s words surprised him, and he fought back tears once again. Sniffling, Paul put the radio back in his belt without waiting for a response.

  The deputy turned back to the large branch sticking out of the earth. With two burly paws, he pulled it hard to one side, then, without letting it come to rest, he pushed it back the other way. He repeated this motion a second time. On the third such movement, he noticed something down by the base of the branch; the snow appeared to not only be displaced, but also—melting?

  Paul pushed again, and this time he saw something else: a flash of color.

  “Everything all right over there?” Deputy Williams hollered, but Paul, engrossed in what he had just seen, ignored him.