by Ray Garton
Others in the neighborhood were coming out of their homes slowly, looking around, talking quietly to one another in their yards in the glow of their porch lights.
When she’d heard all the gunfire earlier, Doris had automatically reached for the phone to call the police. Then she’d realized they were already there—that they were the ones doing the shooting.
Movement caught her attention and she turned the binoculars a little to the right. She saw Sheriff Hurley crossing the street with a group of deputies, approaching the house.
More movement, again to the right—a news van from Channel 4.
Frowning, Doris muttered, “What’s happening over there?”
* * * *
When he saw the news van pull up and double park beside a cruiser at the curb, Hurley groaned, “Oh, shit.” It was bad enough that they were following him around from the scene of one killing to another, but he knew if they saw that thing on the floor in the house, he would never be able to keep things quiet. The reporters would start a panic in the town—in the whole county—and it would make his job a lot harder than it was already. Hurley turned to the deputies. “Get some tape and cordon off this entire yard, right now. Make sure nobody gets near that house, understand? And somebody go stand in that doorway—I don’t want that body to be visible from out here. Get something and cover it up, while you’re at it.”
Several of them replied positively as Hurley broke away from them and went to the news van as its two doors opened.
Here we go, Hurley thought.
* * * *
The first thing Jason noticed inside the house was the smell. It was, in part, dusty and moldy, but there was something else almost overpowering those odors—the heavily musky, gamey animal smells of the other figures that lurked in the murky darkness.
Candles burned in a few places, their glow shifting back and forth, giving the darkness a kind of secret animation, a flickering life that jittered over the figures around the room. Some stood, others sat or crouched, all in groups of two, three, or four, curiously sniffing each other. Some of them grunted as they rutted savagely on the floor, or on dusty old furniture, or against the walls. Still others stood and watched Jason as he came into the house.
Jason’s hunger gnawed at his gut. But he realized that was not all he was feeling—he could feel the hunger of the others! Their urge to feed, their need to bite into warm flesh and feel and taste hot blood was as powerful as his. Combined, those hungers and urges formed a sort of vibration, an invisible aura that surrounded them all, a silent and unseen shower in which they eagerly bathed.
They were enjoying it. The anticipation of what was to come—the hunt for the right prey, the stalking of the prey, the attack and the kill, the explosive release of savage sex—seemed to be as powerful as the real thing. But then, Jason did not know—he had not yet fed.
The one-eyed man began to communicate with them silently, not with words, but feelings and pictures. He comforted, he reassured, he encouraged their hunger and their urge to hunt and kill and fuck—but all the while, he subtly impressed upon them his primacy, his leadership. He made sure they had no doubt about his alpha status.
He was like them, and yet different, because he was older, stronger, more practiced in the ways of the hunt, far more experienced in the kill. He emanated power and strength.
Jason feared the man—it was a fear he could not control or reason with, but one imbued with great respect for the creature that stood before him.
Something in the room changed. The air became charged. Suddenly, the other creatures in the room were all standing, shifting from foot to foot, making low, rumbling sounds.
Jason felt it, too. It came from the man—
Taggart
—who stood perfectly still among them—
Irving
—sending his thoughts and feelings out to all of them.
Taggart Irving Taggart Irving Taggart
The name entered Jason’s mind from the outside, infiltrated his primitive thought processes.
Taggart was stirring their hunger like the boiling contents of a steaming pot, making it roil. He expressed to them the feeling of the kill, the sensation of their fangs popping through flesh, the taste of blood bubbling up into their mouths, and it was making them restless. Those engaged in sex stopped and pulled apart so they could pace as they kept their eyes on Taggart.
They breathed harder, faster, fidgeted nervously, all of them—even Jason. His heart thundered in his chest. He could feel the very blood rushing through his veins. He wanted to—no, he needed to feed, had to. But something held him there, looking at Taggart. Large invisible hands pressed his feet to the floor. Some distant part of Jason’s mind understood that it was Taggart himself—he was not quite done with them yet.
Taggart worked them into a frenzy. The house hummed with their deep growls and chuffing snorts, their pacing footsteps, and the occasional snapping of their jaws.
Saliva dripped from Jason’s snout as he closed his eyes and lost himself in the sensations Taggart was sending—warm, tender skin, hot, salty blood pumping into his mouth, the taste of the raw, wet flesh. As these sensations moved through him, he pictured only one face, one person. The person he held responsible for the death of Andrea. The leader of those men who had fired their guns and sent a bullet into her neck.
Sheriff Farrell Hurley.
A sharp sound interrupted Jason’s reverie and that of all the others.
A voice crying out. Then, pounding.
“Hello? Help me! Please!”
The room fell silent and every head turned toward the front door.
“Hello? Is anyone there?”
Taggart turned his body around to face the door.
“I’m hurt! Somebody please help! We’ve had a wreck ... across the street! My wife—” The voice was interrupted by sobs. “I think ... my wife ... is dead!”
The room filled with the sound of thick, heavy breathing.
Taggart went to the door, reached out and turned the knob, pulled it open.
A figure huddled low on the porch.
“Will you help me? Please, call an ambu—”
Taggart bent down, grabbed the man with both hands, and jerked him easily through the door into the house. He kicked the door shut and threw the man over the floor toward the others.
Jason smelled the blood. So did the others.
They all surged forward, but Taggart stopped them.
“Wait! New ones—”
“—Neeewww—”
“—first. You ... and you ... and—”
“—yooouuu—”
“—you, come here.”
Taggart gestured for Jason and others to come forward.
The others grumbled their protest.
As Jason neared the man—
“Wait! No! Wait, please, I’m hurt, I can’t—what’re you doing?”
—the smell of blood grew stronger. Jason’s consciousness winked in and out of a bleary, foggy state of helplessness as he threw himself forward and pounced on the man along with the other new ones.
The man began to scream and fight weakly, but he was no match for them.
Jason felt his fangs pierce the man’s skin, felt the blood well up in his mouth, tasted the warm, juicy, raw meat underneath.
The man’s screams stopped with a gagging sound.
Jason consumed bites of the man, growling and grunting as he fed. But he did not eat much. He stopped when the face of Sheriff Farrell Hurley appeared behind his eyes again.
Jason lifted his head and looked around, his muzzle dripping with the man’s blood. His eyes found Taggart in the flickering darkness.
Taggart slowly lifted his arms—
“Feeed! Feeeeed!”
—as he looked around at all of them.
There was a great, noisy rush as the creatures left the house. Some went out windows while others bottlenecked at the front door, but they left the house quickly, eagerly.
Hungrily.
And Jason went with them, bounding over the bloody, savaged corpse on the floor.
Once outside, he felt better—he had not realized how closed in and imprisoned he’d felt in the house. Now he was out in the open, in the night. He quickly put distance between himself and the house as he ran across the street and disappeared into the woods on the other side.
He ran back the way he had come with only two images vivid in his mind.
First, Andrea’s face, smiling softly at him, her eyes warm, skin soft.
And second, the face of Sheriff Farrell Hurley, which he looked forward to eating.
42
Stalking the Prey
“Do me a favor and just go, okay?” Hurley said to Shana Myers.
She smiled and said, “Sorry, Sheriff, but I am doing my job, after all.”
They stood in front of the double-parked news van, in the glow of its headlights, surrounded by pools of pulsing red and blue light. Deputies were about to finish putting yellow crime scene tape around the front yard and the house. A moment earlier, it had begun to sprinkle a little, and the drops glimmered in the van’s headlights like tiny gems. Shana’s cameraman stood in the van’s open driver’s side door, getting his equipment together.
“I realize that,” Hurley said. “But at the moment, there’s simply nothing to report.”
She tossed her head back and laughed. “Sheriff, it looks like nearly every deputy you have is out here tonight. With all these deputies running around, how can there be nothing to report? Also, there’ve been reports of police activity and gunfire on this street. Is all this for just one wild animal?”
He did not respond, just turned his head and looked into the throbbing blue-and-red glow all around them.
“Is there more than one?” she said. “Just what kind of wild animal gets this sort of attention, Sheriff?”
Hurley sighed, then opened his mouth to reply, but he stopped when he saw George Purdy’s van pull up and double-park in front of the house beside a cruiser. He turned to Shana again and said, “Look, stick around if you want, but I can’t let you anywhere near that house, and I have no comment for now.”
“But how can you—”
“I told you, I have nothing to say. I’ll talk to you when I have something more to offer.”
As he walked away, the van from Channel 7 drove up.
“Damn,” Hurley muttered.
George killed the engine and lights, then he and his young male assistant got out. George came around the front of the van to meet Hurley while the assistant hung back and waited.
“What’ve you got?” George said as they stood close, his voice low.
“A couple more just like Emily Crane,” Hurley said. “Same condition. A reaction to silver.”
“You mean, silver bullets.”
“Of course. One’s in the house, the other’s out in the woods across the street, on the other side of those houses. Go in the house first, cover that thing up, and get it out of here as soon as you can. Whatever you do, don’t let these reporters get near it, understand? Don’t even let them see it. Once you’ve got that one under wraps, you can take care of the one in the woods.”
“Gotcha.”
“C’mon,” Hurley said as he went to the tape cordon and lifted it up. He and George ducked under it and headed across the yard.
“Sheriff!” called Mike Wills from Channel 7. “Could I have a word with you?”
Hurley did not even turn around. He turned his head slightly and called over his shoulder, “No comment right now.”
“You know what you’re going to tell them yet?” George asked as they went up the porch steps.
Hurley laughed. “Are you kidding? I don’t have any damned idea.”
* * * *
The smell of Ella Hurley’s meatloaf cooking in the oven filled the house. It was a warm smell, rich with seasonings. Farrell loved her meatloaf. The recipe had been passed down from her grandmother to her mother, and then to her, and Ella had given it to her daughter. Along with its particular blend of seasonings, it included chili sauce instead of the usual ketchup, sliced mushrooms, and a spear of dill pickle buried in the center of the loaf.
Outside, it began to rain hard enough for Ella to hear the sound of the rainfall. It was a constant soft whisper that surrounded the house. She stood at the stove in a creamy cashmere sweater and colorful, flower-print broomstick skirt.
It was twenty-four minutes after seven. Broccoli steamed and rice pilaf cooked on the stove. Ella did not even know if Farrell would be coming home in time for dinner. Even so, she’d decided to go ahead and cook. As good as it was fresh out of the oven, the meatloaf was even better later on cold sandwiches, and that was Farrell’s favorite way to eat it. She would cook the meatloaf, have some for herself with the broccoli and rice pilaf. Then she would put it away in the refrigerator—he could have a sandwich when he got home, however late that might be.
As she took the broccoli off the burner, glass shattered somewhere in the house. Ella froze, her eyes suddenly wide.
Something thumped loudly in the house and Ella gasped. The breaking glass had been one thing—a branch or a thrown rock could’ve hit a window, or perhaps someone outside the house had broken something—but the thumping was inside the house.
Someone had come in.
Ella turned around and crossed the kitchen, went through the doorway to the hall, then stopped and listened.
Another sound, this one indistinguishable, so quiet and nearly inaudible that it made Ella wonder if she had heard it at all. But if she had—if there really had been a sound just then—it was unmistakably the sound of movement.
She headed down the hall toward the front of the house. As she passed the closed door of the downstairs bedroom, she heard what she thought was the floor creaking on the other side. She stumbled to a stop and jerked her head around to look at the closed bedroom door, lips parted, brow creased in a frown. Her right elbow was bent, her hand frozen at the level of her throat.
A heavy silence stretched out, interrupted only by the sound of the falling rain outside.
Ella was not quite sure what to do. If someone was in the bedroom, should she go to the phone and call Farrell, or should she simply get out of the house immediately? Then again, what if she the sounds she’d heard were not inside at all and she had merely allowed her imagination to run rampant? She would be mortified if she ran out of her house in a panic for nothing.
She stood there unmoving for what seemed a long time. After a good length of silence, with no sound at all, the tension began to ease out of her. She started to turn around to go back to the kitchen, started to think to herself that it had been her imagination after all, when the bedroom door was jerked open. Framed in the dark doorway was a hulking, silver-eyed beast.
A horrible animal growl filled the world. Ella did a couple of things at once. She screamed, but beneath the horrible growl, she could not hear her own voice. At the same time, she jolted her body back around and broke into a run for the front of the house.
Something clamped onto her hair and jerked her backward.
Ella screamed, but she did not panic. She threw herself forward with every ounce of strength she had.
Her scalp burned as hair was ripped out of her head by the roots. She gulped the pain down like acid reflux and kept running, until she got to the stairs. She spun to her right and took the staircase two steps at a time.
At no point did she look back, but she could hear the person—no, it was a thing—behind her in pursuit. It breathed heavily and made a moist, grumbling sound as it came after her. She picked up the smell of the creature—a heavy animal smell, gamey and musky—and somehow, that stirred more terror in her than anything else.
At the top of the stairs, Ella’s toe hit the edge of the landing and she stumbled forward, almost fell, but waved her arms at her sides as she kept plunging forward, regained her balance, and did not stop.
The bathroom came first, t
o her right. She almost ducked in there, closed the door, and locked it, but a thought stopped her:
Telephone!
She had to call Farrell. He would either come himself, or send someone else immediately. The only phone upstairs was beyond the closed door of the master bedroom.
At the end of the hall.
* * * *
Jason reached the edge of the woods. He was fully transformed, lost in his animal self, following his laser-like senses of smell and hearing. The heavy darkness of the woods gently gave way to the soft glow that came from the windows of houses along the street.
The sound of rain falling pattered all around him, but Jason pushed that aside to listen for other smaller sounds. He could smell the group of people gathered around the Norton house some time before he could see them. Jason hunkered down low, and as he hurried through a back yard and along the side of a house, he instinctively broke down the smells to those of individuals in the group, one person at a time.
Jason stood at the corner of the house, pressed against the wall and concealed in darkness. Droplets of water clung to his fur, but he barely noticed the rainfall. His shiny black nose twitched as he frantically sniffed at the buffet of people in the street and on the sidewalks and in the yard of the Norton house.
His interest, however, was in one person alone.
Jason’s eyes passed over all the activity in the street and in and around the yard of the Norton house, looking for Sheriff Farrell Hurley.
There. Standing on the sidewalk talking to three deputies. He seemed tense and preoccupied as he gestured with his arms, animated but at the same time a bit stiff.
Jason continued to sniff until he found Hurley’s scent. He isolated it from the ocean of other smells, and locked onto it.