by Ray Garton
Jason went into the bathroom wearing only his boxers, and emptied his full bladder. When he was done, he went to the sink and washed his hands. He saw his face in the mirror—the bandages on his cheek and forehead had not gotten through the night in very good shape. They had peeled nearly all the way off.
Something ... wasn’t right.
He frowned at his reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror over the sink, leaned in close. The cuts beneath those hanging bandages did not look the same. He reached up and took the bandages all the way off, and gasped.
The stitches in his forehead were still there, all four of them—but the wound they’d held together was gone. All the wounds on his face were gone.
Jason began tugging at the bandage on his upper left arm. He unraveled it as quickly as he could with his right hand—and the bite on his arm was gone. It was not better—it was gone.
“Holy shit,” Jason breathed at himself in the mirror. He touched his face, the places where that creature’s claws had broken the skin four times in a couple of drags across his face.
He went back into his bedroom and sat on the edge of the bed. He sat there for a long time, frowning, thinking about his healed wounds. Finally, he stood with a sigh and put on a robe, slipped his feet into black slippers, and left his bedroom.
Mom had left a note on his refrigerator while he slept.
Jason dear,
I want you to sleep as long as you can, so I’m not going to disturb you. When you get up, let me know and I’ll fix you breakfast. Or lunch. Whatever you want.
The last thing Jason wanted was for her to see that he’d healed overnight. She would go crazy. He wondered what she would do. Probably call the pastor of her church and insist there’d been a miracle.
He would put the bandages back on before leaving his apartment so he would not have to explain his healed wounds—because he could not explain them.
But as it turned out, he did not leave the apartment.
Jason’s feet felt like blocks of lead and his arms were filled with heavy sand as he went to the bar and, with effort, hiked himself up on one of the stools. He took a banana from the basket of fruit on the bar and peeled it, ate it slowly, lips smacking as he chewed with his mouth open, something he did not typically do—even his jaw felt heavy.
He thought of his dreams—only one dream, really, over and over again. Something about a house, that damned house, so familiar—
It’s the Laramie house, isn’t it? he kept thinking.
—and yet so unreal, big and towering, a small jungle growing up around it, the wind-blown winter branches clawing at the old walls and squealing over what little glass remained in the windows. The house pulled at him in his dreams with a malignant strength.
Jason stood and staggered over to the window that provided a view of Andrea’s house and yard. Jimmy was home, his pickup in the driveway. Jason sighed as he thought about his time with Andrea much earlier that morning. Why had Andrea run off like that? What had gone wrong? Guilt made his chest feel full. He went back to his bed—this time, he flopped onto it, then turned onto his right side.
Jason was hungry. But it was a strange hunger. He was thinking about his hunger as he drifted off to sleep.
* * * *
Andrea sat at the kitchen table with Jenny, each with a coloring book open before them, coloring the pictures. In the living room, some game blared loudly on the television as Jimmy watched it and made his way through a case of Budweiser. The baby was sleeping. She was tired, her eyes heavy with grey half-moons beneath her eyes.
Jimmy had been behaving oddly all day. He seemed tired, and yet there was something oddly energetic about his behavior, something quick and jumpy. He did not speak to her, and behaved as if she weren’t there at all. That was typical of him—but it was the only typical thing about him that day. Otherwise, he did not seem himself at all. But Andrea found that she did not care. She was too preoccupied with her own thoughts.
She had only a foggy memory of the night before ... of going to the house, of being with ... others. She’d wanted to stay, but she felt a strong need to come back here, to take care of her children. But the need to stay there had been powerful.
It was really real, she thought. All of it. I was there ... with them ... the others.
“Look, Mommy,” Jenny said, “I colored a green hippot ... hippoto ... Mommy, how do you say that word again?”
Andrea stared down at the book open before her, coloring in a picture of a giraffe. She worked absently on all the greenery surrounding the giraffe, and the tree from which it was eating—but she wasn’t seeing it. Her staring eyes weren’t seeing much of anything. She was lost deep inside her own mind.
“Mommy? What’s this called?”
Still, Andrea did not answer. She was too busy studying the dark picture in her mind. It was a picture of that shadowy grey house and the others she’d seen there. She’d felt a strong sense of belonging with them, a rightness that had made leaving difficult.
The only other thing she was capable of thinking about was her hunger.
“Mommy? Mommy!” Jenny reached over, closed her little hand on the sleeve of Andrea’s blue sweatshirt, and tugged a few times.
Finally, Andrea’s whole body jolted in her chair and she looked down at her little girl. She cleared her throat, then said, a bit shakily, “Whuh-what, honey?” She frowned as she smacked her lips. There was an odd metallic taste in her mouth.
“This thing, Mommy, this animal,” Jenny said. “What’s it called again?”
“It’s a hippopotamus. But you can call it a hippo.”
“Thank you, Mommy.” Jenny vigorously returned to her coloring, eyes intense, the tip of her tongue glistening in the corner of her mouth, lips pressed tightly together.
Andrea did not go on coloring. Instead, she stared down at the partially colored picture as she fell back into herself like someone falling down a deep well.
The house, and the others in it, would not leave her mind.
The hunger, which she’d experienced and satisfied earlier, gnawed at her. She remembered how she’d satisfied it. At first, she was horrified, but that passed quickly. Then she thought of the hot, wet gratification of feeding. Her tongue passed slowly over her lips.
She tried to think of Jason—of their times together, of the way he treated her, touched her, loved her—but her mind was held firmly in the memory of feeding.
What must Jason think of her, leaving him so suddenly like that? She knew it was for his own good ... but how could she explain that to him? She would have to, though, sooner or later.
Andrea heard voices. Jenny’s. And Jimmy’s. Saying something to her. Was Jimmy ... shouting?
A hand slapped her face.
Andrea was jerked from her dark thoughts and she realized there was something in her mouth, something waxy.
“The hell you doing, eating that thing?” Jimmy said.
It took a moment, but Andrea finally realized that she had been chewing up the green crayon in her hand. She spit the waxy, chewed-up pieces into her left palm.
Jimmy had not meant to slap her face—he’d slapped the crayon from her mouth. But that did not make her face sting any less.
“Fix me something,” Jimmy said. “Fix me a ... I don’t know, a-a ... a sandwich, maybe. And some chips, what kinda chips we got?”
Frowning and looking troubled, Andrea stood and went to the waste can, dropped the chewed-up crayon pieces into the garbage. “We don’t have any chips,” she said.
“What? Why not?”
“You ate them.”
“Then why didn’t you get more?”
“Because I just haven’t yet. Okay?” Her words were clipped and cold—not the way she normally spoke to Jimmy.
His eyes widened with disbelief. “You getting funny with me?” he said. His eyes were wide, showing a lot of white, and he did not stop moving—he jittered and fidgeted, never holding still. He slapped her again, this time fully intendi
ng to hit her face. He slapped her so hard, she almost fell over. She turned to him, eyes glaring, and her lips pulled back as she prepared to say something, to shout something, but at the last second, she stopped.
What am I doing? she thought. He’ll beat me unconscious.
“You gonna talk back to me?” he said. “Huh? You talking back to me now?”
“Nuh-no,” she said, her voice quiet and soft again, meek. “No.”
“Go get some chips.”
“I ... well, Jimmy, I ... “ I what? she thought. “I really don’t think I should drive because I’ve got a, um, a really bad headache.”
“Headache’s not gonna kill you. Go down to the 7-Eleven on the corner. Get me some Doritos. The cool ranch flavor.”
Andrea did not feel like driving—she wasn’t sure she was capable of driving the way she felt, her hands trembled and her insides seemed to jiggle like Jell-O—but she did not see that she had much choice.
“Can I go, Mommy?” Jenny said.
“No, honey,” Andrea said. “No, you stay here.”
Jimmy got another beer and returned to his chair in the living room, to his game.
Anger surged through Andrea. She turned away from Jenny so the little girl would not see it on her face, the anger and hatred she suddenly felt for her husband. This was not typical of her—she usually felt cowed after he hit her or shouted at her. But at that moment, she burned with rage. She wanted to grab him and claw him and bite him and—Andrea took a deep, steadying breath. She leaned her hip against the counter and waited for it to pass, breathed it out of herself, tried to let go of it.
A few minutes later, her feet dragging and her mind twisted with distraction, Andrea left the house to get Jimmy’s chips. But as she drove, she was filled with a nauseating certainty that something very bad was going to happen soon.
37
The Calm Before the Storm
Rain no longer fell from the corpse-grey sky, and the biting wind died down to nothing. A funereal stillness fell over Big Rock, heavy and ominous.
That Saturday morning and afternoon were as uneventful as the overcast, windless weather.
Below the Jags, foaming waves raged against the rocks and filled the air with undulating mist.
The two movie theaters in Big Rock did not do their usual booming weekend business, and even the mall wasn’t very busy, with more space than usual in its sprawling parking lot. Most people stayed inside because of the cold weather and watched games or movies. That was what they told themselves, that it was because of the cold weather. The day simply felt ... off somehow, as if it was not Saturday, but some other day, some day not marked on the calendar.
Twice the normal number of deputies prepared to go on patrol that night. Daniel Fargo provided them all with countless silver ammunition for their pistols, revolvers, and shotguns. Many of the deputies wore strange expressions on their faces that afternoon—no matter how Fargo put it, or how much Hurley reinforced it, they all had a hard time with the fact that, come that night, they would be on the lookout for werewolves.
As the day wore on, a thick fog moved in from the sea. It moved slowly, easing in and curling around buildings, oozing up streets, swirling around traffic lights and creating eerie haloes.
Annie Culver was working dispatch, and 911 calls were at a minimum all day—a heart attack, a few car accidents, things like that, but not much for a weekend. At the end of Annie’s shift, Shelly Blair relieved her and was told that it was slow. Shelly was glad to hear it—her three children had run her ragged all day, and she welcomed a slow shift.
But it was not to be.
As the day ended, something other than the darkness of night fell over Big Rock.
38
Incident at Willow Park Apartments
Shirley Kidderman had done her best with the mess in Vanessa Peterman’s apartment, but she could not work miracles. She’d managed to sweep up the broken glass and vacuum up the tiny bits, as well as the dirt on the living room floor from the shattered potted plant. It had taken all afternoon, and the day was dying outside. Shirley’s joints ached—they always ached a little these days, but the pain was worse now, having done so much bending over and sweeping and vacuuming.
Vanessa was still asleep in her bedroom. Shirley felt awful for the poor girl—she knew she cared for her married boyfriend a lot, and his death had hit her hard.
When she was finished cleaning, Vanessa went into the kitchen, looked in the refrigerator for something cold to drink, and poured herself a glass of grape juice. She was drinking from it when the piercing, horrible scream ripped through the silence from Vanessa’s bedroom and so startled Shirley that she dropped the glass. It shattered on the floor and splashed grape juice over the tiles.
Shirley frowned down at the new mess and muttered, “Oh, of all the—”
The scream came again, and it did not stop. Shirley hurried through the apartment, down the hall, and stopped outside the closed bedroom door. Her eyes grew and her mouth fell open as she listened to the horrible sounds coming from inside—popping and crunching sounds, shattering glass, and screams, horrible screams.
“Van ... Vanessa?” she said, her voice weak. She put her hand on the doorknob.
The screams changed, became deeper, rougher. They turned into animal-like growling sounds.
Shirley started to turn the knob as she said, “Vanessa, are you—”
Something slammed into the door on the other side, and a splintered crack appeared down the center. Shirley was so startled, she cried out, then blurted, “My Gawd!” as she backed away from the door. “Vanessa? Vanessa!”
The door was pulled open.
Shirley slowly tilted her head back to look up at the creature, her mouth yawning, eyes open to their limit, arms out slightly at her sides with fingers splayed wide. Before Shirley could scream, her throat was slashed open so deeply that her head flopped all the way backward until it bounced between her shoulder blades. Before Shirley’s body could collapse to the floor, the creature embraced her wavering torso and lowered its yawning, slobbering snout over the large opening in her neck to slurp at the ribbons of blood still pumping rhythmically from her torn throat.
* * * *
The sun had just set, and the thick cloud cover blocked the light of the moon and stars. At the Willow Park Apartment complex, bright lights around the central courtyard cast a glow through the misty night, illuminating the swimming pool.
Carrie Myers, a single mother of two, was about to take her children to
McDonald’s for dinner. She’d promised if they were good that day, they’d get Happy Meals for dinner, and they had done their best to be well-behaved all day long. Mickey was five and Danika, Dani for short, would be turning four next week. They came out of the upper-level apartment and Carrie finished putting on her coat, then turned around and locked the door behind them. She’d left the yellow anti-bug porch light on.
That was when she heard the sound. It was a horrible, inhuman scream that sent ice chips down Carrie’s spine. Then she heard a growl, the kind of growl she would expect a large animal to make—loud and rumbling and frightening.
Carrie froze.
“Whassat, Mommy?” Dani asked.
The growl sounded again, and it was close. It seemed to be coming from the apartment two doors down. Carrie frowned, trying to remember who lived there. Shirley Kidderman lived right next door to Carrie, and on the other side was ... some woman who usually kept to herself. Carrie could not remember her name. There’d been a lot of noise coming from there that morning—screaming and crashing and shattering. Carrie had looked out her door when she’d heard all that racket and saw Shirley going to the woman’s apartment.
Farther down the walkway, at the bottom of the U formed by the apartment complex, a door opened up and Willard Borman stuck his head out. He wore a T-shirt stretched taut over his sagging belly, baggy green pants, and blue slippers. He was a widower in his sixties who was always winking and making eyes
at Carrie. He seemed harmless, but Carrie kept her distance. Willard frowned in the glow of his porch light; Carrie looked at him and shrugged.
“A animal,” Mickey said. “Mommy, nobody’s s’posed a have animals, huh?”
Carrie barely heard her son. She stood frozen in place with the house key still sticking out from her thumb and forefinger, wondering if they should go back inside.
The screaming and growling stopped. A heavy silence stretched on for awhile. Carrie started to move again, to head for the stairs with her children.
The door on the other side of Shirley Kidderman’s apartment was pulled open.
Carrie stopped breathing, froze, and looked down the walk toward the apartment.
It had to duck to come through the doorway. It was enormous and hairy, with long, pointed ears and a narrow snout, and—
It turned and faced her and the children.
“Oh Jesus!” Carrie said with a gasp. She turned and tried to put the key back in the lock to open the door so they could go back inside, but the key jittered and clicked clumsily against the doorknob and simply would not slide into the lock and—
The thing growled again as it came toward them.
Carrie screamed and grabbed her children, pushing them toward the stairs at the end of the walkway, saying, “Go, now, go go go!” She grabbed their wrists, one in each of Carrie’s hands, and Dani was lifted up off the concrete as Carrie dragged Mickey along with them to the stairs. She hurried down the steps praying silently in her mind, Please Jesus don’t let us fall—what the hell is it?—don’t let us fall don’t don’t don’t—
The thing put a long-fingered, clawed hand on the black metal railing and hiked its legs up and over the rail. It dropped from the upper level and landed in a squat on the concrete below, as easily as if it had jumped off a curb.