by Ray Garton
They turned to see her standing in the open doorway of the office, leaning on the doorjamb.
“Hi,” Buffy said, smiling, her voice so tentative, as if she were talking to a stranger, that it surprised her.
Willow smiled back. “Hey, Buffy.” But her body was tense as she smiled at her friend . . . and she had no idea why.
“If what we’re dealing with is in any of the books I’ve checked,” Giles said, “I shall need more information to find it. ‘Eating cattle to the bone’ is simply not enough.”
“What does that mean?” Willow asked, taking a single step into the office.
“It means there has to be something else,” Giles replied. “Some other trait, some other factor . . . something besides eating cattle.”
“And since we don’t know of any other traits,” Buffy said, “we’ll have to wait for it, or them, to show us one, right?”
Giles nodded. “I’m afraid so.”
“Ooooh,” Willow said with a shiver in her voice, “You know, to be honest, I’m not too down with the sound of that.”
“I’m not too down and I’m not very happy about it, either,” he said, turning to her. “But we have no choice. All we can do now is wait for something else. Some other characteristic that will help us understand what we’re dealing with, if we’re dealing with anything at all.”
“What do you mean, if we’re dealing with anything at all?” Buffy asked as she leaned forward and placed both hands on his desktop.
“We have not yet ruled out the possibility that this is just the work of some kind of wildlife. If not mountain lions, then perhaps something else.”
“Tell me you don’t really believe that, Giles,” she said, leaning closer to him. “Tell me you’re just saying that to sound thorough, like you’re covering all the options.”
“The incident that took place today was, without a doubt, very strange,” Giles said. “But there is no sign of it being supernatural.”
“Waiting for these things to show other traits means people start getting eaten to the bone,” Buffy reminded him.
He lifted the open book from his lap and placed it on top of the others on his desk, then wheeled his chair back from the desk and turned it toward Buffy.
“I’ve thought of that, and needless to say, I find that possibility . . . well, unpleasant at best,” he said. “There is nothing we can do now, because we have absolutely no idea what this thing is. Or, of course . . . things.”
Buffy pushed away from the desk and leaned heavily against the wall. “This isn’t any local wildlife, Giles. It’s something we’re unfamiliar with, but it’s not coyotes or a bear or a pack of ravenous possums.”
“I’m inclined to agree with you, Buffy,” Giles said. “But for now, our hands are tied.”
“I could patrol cow pastures tonight,” Buffy suggested.
Giles carefully closed the three books on his desk. “I suspect that would be a waste of time. So far, this has only happened twice, and in different locations. For all we know, it may not happen again, and if it does, we haven’t a clue where it will be. I’d like you to confine your patrol to the usual locales, Buffy. Tomorrow, we’ll see what happens.”
Buffy said nothing, but she thought about how easy it would be to just go ahead and do it, anyway. She could call Oz, and he could pick her up in his van. They could find a pasture somewhere around Sunnydale, and she could wait . . . just wander and wait for something, or things, to show up.
That was what Buffy would do under different circumstances, but not these. Deep down, she knew Giles was right. They knew so little — nothing really — about what they were dealing with, it would be a waste of time. And any night Buffy spent not patrolling her usual route was an invitation to trouble.
Both girls stood silently in the office, their faces thoughtful and a little tense. Giles looked back and forth between them, waiting for one of them to do or say something. When neither of them did, he spoke:
“I believe you have a number of tests coming up, correct?”
They both flinched, as if slapped out of their own thoughts. “Yeah,” Buffy and Willow said simultaneously.
“Then I suggest you go study for them while things are quiet and uneventful.” He smiled a friendly but dismissive smile, letting them know it was time for them to go.
Outside the library, the hall was dark and their footsteps echoed in the empty silence.
Willow felt tense. She’d been up and down these halls a million times, even at night when they were kind of creepy, as they were now. It wasn’t that. It was the way she’d been feeling lately, neglected by her friends, especially her best friend, and it was making her uncomfortable around Buffy. It was the knowledge that something was still out there eating whole cows, something she might have brought to Sunnydale with her uncertain magic, with that ancient, moldy old spell that might not even have been intact.
“So,” Willow said hesitantly, glancing at Buffy, whose eyes were directed straight ahead, “are you really, um, going to go study now?”
“I’ll probably patrol for a while. I’ll study later.”
Willow chewed her lower lip as she silently debated whether or not to ask the next question, then: “I could help if you’d like.”
Without turning to look at Willow, Buffy said, “Nah. Slayer’s hours. Some midnight oil-burning. That kinda thing. You’ll be asleep.”
That hasn’t been a problem in the past, Willow thought. Her feet felt very heavy as she took the remaining steps to the door. She stiffened as they turned to face one another.
“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Willow said, forcing as much of a smile as she could muster.
“Yeah, tomorrow.” Buffy nodded once, then pushed out the door. Outside, she opened her umbrella and went down the steps.
Willow hadn’t brought an umbrella because it hadn’t been raining when she came to the library earlier. She watched Buffy disappear into the night, then braced herself against the cold and hurried down the steps through the rain.
What was that all about? Buffy wondered as rain pattered loudly on her umbrella. She wasn’t wondering about anything Willow did, or didn’t, do . . . she was wondering about her own discomfort around Willow, her behavior toward her. She’s my best friend, and I felt like she was some kind of stranger . . . someone I didn’t want to be around.
It was bad enough that there was something going on around Sunnydale that neither she nor Giles understood, something she knew was going to be trouble, although she didn’t know when or how. Behaving in ways she didn’t understand and experiencing such negative feelings toward her best friend, however, was much worse. Vampires, hellhounds, demons . . . a disagreement with Willow over which they could make up, a misunderstanding that could be explained away — she understood all those things and could deal with them. But the idea of losing a hold on her own feelings was disturbing, and it seemed that was what had just happened.
Buffy tried to shove those thoughts into the back of her mind as she headed through the rain to the nearest cemetery. It was time to focus all her attention on the night, and the dangerous things that moved through it.
While Buffy patrolled, pausing on her stroll now and then to kick, punch, and stake fang-baring vampires that lunged hungrily from the dark, Willow lay on her bed trying to study. She had trouble concentrating as she reviewed material she would be expected to know next week, but she managed to absorb a few bits of information. The hard part was going to be hanging on to it until the tests.
By the time Buffy headed home to do some studying, Willow was sliding between the sheets of her bed. In spite of the sound of the falling rain outside, the nighttime silence of her bedroom was deafening, even smothering. She turned on her clock radio, set it to turn the music off in an hour, then settled back in bed.
When she closed her eyes, hoping to sleep, Willow saw the flesh-stripped carcasses of those cows in her mind’s eye: blood-streaked ribs curving up from the spine, then back down again . . . empty eyes
ockets staring from a skull that narrowed to a snout, naked teeth lined up in flat rows.
Willow opened her eyes and turned on her side, looking at the green glow from the clock radio. But in her mind, she could hear the sounds that might have been made in those pastures when the cows were eaten: wet slicing sounds, the whispery tearing of warm flesh, teeth clacking against bone, loud, sloppy chewing, and worst of all, the deep, ragged, throaty wailing of the cows that might have gone on until whatever it was that was eating them began to consume their internal organs.
Shuddering from head to toe, Willow rolled over on her other side and stared into the dark corner of her room.
While Buffy studied, Willow finally — after twisting and turning in her bed — drifted off to sleep. During her restless sleep, Willow had the nightmare again, most of the details of which she could never quite remember upon waking.
When Buffy went to bed, she was so tired, she fell asleep immediately with ease. She had her nightmare again, too. It was the same nightmare Willow had.
Buffy and Willow both dreamed they were lying awake in their beds, their bedrooms dark and quiet . . . until voices began to whisper at them. The voices came from all around the room, and when they lifted their heads, both girls saw small, slanted, flaming red eyes glaring at them from the darkness. At first, the whispering made no sense, but the eyes moved closer and words formed, then sentences. Both girls tried to get out of their beds but found their bodies were paralyzed, numb. They had no choice but to lie there and listen to the sibilant chatter.
The eyes were low, and when they moved forward even more, both girls could see why; the visitors to their bedroom were very short. They could make out no details of the small figures because they were still in the dark, but they were close enough for the girls to see their stumpy outlines. Buffy and Willow didn’t care about that, though, because by then, they were paying close attention to what the creatures were saying. They were so caught up in the whispered words, they hardly even noticed the glowing red eyes anymore.
In the dreams, the voices whispered horrible things that frightened both Buffy and Willow at first, but soon made them feel relieved. Because the voices told each of them what was causing all the problems in their lives . . . and how each of them could get rid of it.
Chapter 5
BY MORNING, THE RAIN HAD STOPPED. THE CLOUDS pulled back to reveal a clear and astonishingly blue sky, but stayed within sight, indecisive, as if debating a return engagement. Once it rose above the large wreath of clouds, the sun warmed the chilly air and dried up the tiny gems of moisture that clung to the leaves.
While the students of Sunnydale High were just arriving at school by bus, car, or on foot, two aging retirees stepped out onto their front porches in the well-kept residential neighborhood known as Clover Circle. It was one of the oldest neighborhoods in Sunnydale; many of the people who lived there had moved in when it was a new development, and had stayed there long enough to grow old with it.
Tom Niles and Delbert Kepley were two such residents. They had lived next door to each other for over forty years. In their younger days, they and their wives had gone dancing and to movies together, camping, hiking . . . they’d done everything together. As the years wore on, they took up bridge; Tom and Delbert went fishing together several times a year, and their wives got together afternoons to crochet and watch their stories on television. When Tom’s wife died, Delbert and his wife, Madge, had given him the support he needed to adjust to life alone. Tom and Fran had raised two children, who were now gone, grown and with children of their own. Madge was unable to have children, and she and Delbert had discussed adoption, but somehow they’d never quite gotten around to it.
Their yards were immaculate, cared for daily with loving hands. Short, perfectly trimmed shrubs grew along the white picket fences that went around each of their large front lawns, and in the years since Tom’s wife died, Madge had tended the flowers that grew on both sides of the white picket fence that separated their yards.
The two men stood on their porches, surveying their yards. But they did not come down the steps and greet one another or chat over the fence, as they usually did. Nor had they done so the day before, or the day before that. A chill had developed between the two friends, suddenly and for no apparent reason.
Madge had questioned Delbert about it after Tom hadn’t come over to watch “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy” two nights in a row, but he’d replied with no more than a frown, a shake of his head, and a growling mumble about being fed up with something or other. She assumed he would tell her about it when he was ready, providing it lasted that long; whatever tiff the two men were having would most likely disappear unacknowledged very soon, as it always did.
As Tom disappeared into his garage, Delbert went back into his house and returned with a portable radio and a steaming mug of coffee. There were two battered old chairs on the covered porch, and Delbert sat in the one that rocked. He put his coffee on the porch’s bannister, found a sports talk show on the radio, and set it next to the mug. He sat back in his chair contentedly to rock gently, sip his coffee, and listen to the radio host discuss pro football with his callers.
From next door, a sound roared to life so suddenly and loudly that Delbert jerked in the creaky old rocker and spilled some coffee on his lap from the mug that was halfway to his mouth. He sat forward, put the cup back on the bannister, and cursed quietly as he brushed at the coffee on his pants. The sound continued: an obnoxious growl so loud and deep, Delbert could feel it in the porch beneath his feet when he stood. He went down the steps to the front walk and turned toward his friend’s house.
Tom was on the riding lawnmower his son had given him last Christmas. It was small and compact, but sounded like a monster truck rally, as far as Delbert was concerned. Besides that, it was completely unnecessary, because Tom’s yard wasn’t big enough to need a riding lawnmower.
Although Tom’s back was to him at the moment, Delbert shouted at him, told him it was too early in the morning for all that racket, sprinkling his diatribe with a few choice curse words. His words were swallowed up by the lawnmower’s noise, but as Tom turned around and headed back in his direction, he saw Delbert’s mouth working, saw his fist shaking angrily. Tom yelled back, waving an arm at Delbert several times. Neither one could hear the other, but each made his point.
Delbert went back up on the porch as Madge pushed the screen door open and leaned out from inside the house. She wore a green-and-yellow flower-print dress and a white apron hung from around her neck; she tied it in back as she spoke.
“Did I hear you yelling something out here, Del?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s that damned riding mower of Tom’s,” he muttered as he grabbed the coffee mug from the bannister. “Acts like he’s tilling a field over there. Hell, we’ve got a bigger lawn than he does.” He started back down the porch steps.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Madge asked. “Are you having some kind of stupid fight?”
“Never mind,” he called over his shoulder. “Go back inside.”
“For goodness’ sake, Del,” she said, louder, “you’ve been friends for forty years!”
“Just go do the dishes!” he snapped.
Delbert went down the walkway a few steps, then onto the lawn, over to the fence that separated his lawn from Tom’s. He started shouting again as he emptied the coffee mug onto the grass. Tom saw him and yelled back, gesturing obscenely. That stiff middle finger stabbing up in the air, knobby with arthritis, angered Delbert even more. He hefted the heavy ceramic mug in his hand a few times, then drew his arm back and threw it as hard as he could, aiming carefully. His throwing arm wasn’t as sturdy or strong as it used to be, but his accuracy was still pretty good.
The mug hit the front of the mower and shattered. The thick, heavy pieces scattered in all directions, and some of them hit Tom, at least one right in the face. He jerked backward and swung his arms up to cover his face. He fell off the mower and h
it the grass hard.
Something far in the back of Delbert’s mind told him to go over the fence and check on his friend, see if he was hurt. But it was gone in a flash, like a flying insect suddenly zapped by a blue-glowing bug light. Instead, Delbert smiled and nodded once with satisfaction as he watched Tom get slowly to his feet.
The riding mower idled as Tom went to the front to check for damage. He turned and glared at Delbert, upper lip pulled back over his dentures. He got back on the mower and drove it forward, still glaring at his neighbor. The mower changed course slightly so it was headed directly for Delbert.
Delbert tilted his head back and laughed as he pointed a finger at Tom.
“Oh, yeah, come and get me with your big mower!” Delbert shouted before laughing some more.
Without hesitation, Tom drove the mower over the flowers, then through the white picket fence. The fence was there for looks only, wasn’t very sturdy, and went down immediately, crunching and crackling as it splintered beneath the mower’s wheels.
Delbert stopped laughing. He didn’t think Tom would do it. But he was still coming straight for Delbert.
“Hey, Tom, hey, stop!” he shouted, holding up both hands.
The mower didn’t even slow down.
Delbert tried to walk backward, stumbled, and went down. He tried to crawl backward on his elbows, screaming, “No, stop, Tom, stop, I’m sorry!” He rolled to the left, went over on his belly, and started to get up.
The mower hit his right side and knocked him to the ground, knocked him on his back again. One wheel rolled up over Delbert’s hip.
Madge came out of the house and hurried down the porch steps. She was about to shout at Tom when something heavy and wet slapped onto the front of her body. She looked down at her white apron. It had turned a dark, dripping red.
Madge began to scream, but Delbert never heard her.
Chapter 6
WILLOW FELT AS IF THE DAY WERE STRETCHING ON forever. Each class had seemed longer than the last, and every teacher seemed to speak with a slow deliberation that bordered on the absurd. Willow was sure it didn’t seem that way to anyone else, because all the students around her seemed to be having a good enough day, walking in small groups, talking, laughing, eating lunch with their friends. The day was dragging along slowly for Willow alone, it seemed, and she supposed it was her own fault for letting herself sink so low. But she couldn’t help it.