The Devouring

by T. M. Wright

  And with his free right arm—his left was swathed in bandages—he gave her a mammoth shove that sent her stumbling backward toward the doorway, a sudden look of surprise and fear on her face. But she missed the doorway by an inch; her right side slammed into the wall, her head flew back, whiplash style, connected solidly with the metal doorjamb, and for a few moments she stood nearly motionless, arms quivering, mouth open, that look of surprise and fear mingling now with a look of motherly concern, as if her child had just shaken his fist at her or told her he was going to run away. "Ah, Benny," she managed, "look what you've done now." And she slid to the floor so she was in a sitting position, legs wide, arms at her sides, palms up, fingers curled, eyes and mouth open.

  Benny cocked his head and looked quizzically at her. "What are you doing?" he asked.

  Her mouth closed, opened, closed, opened. Small gurgling sounds came from her.

  Benny cocked his head the other way. "Are you hurt?" he asked. A sudden scorching pain ripped into his belly; he doubled over. "No," he whispered. "Please, no!"

  ~ * ~

  At that same moment, at the home of Lilian and Frank Janus, Captain Jack Lucas was saying, "Jesus, this is making me sick."

  "Yeah," said Detective Mallory, "tell me about it."

  "I mean it," Lucas said. "I gotta get outta here," and he pushed his way out of the Janus's bathroom, through the bedroom, and into the hallway.

  In the bathroom Guy Mallory adjusted the blanket that covered Lilian Janus to her neck. She was in the fetal position; her thumb was in her mouth; the bandages at the side of her face had been torn halfway off—probably, Mallory supposed, by the woman herself—revealing the dead white skin beneath. The woman's open eyes were glazed over, as if by a nictitating membrane, although as he watched her, Mallory could see them move occasionally, as if she were watching a dream play itself out.

  Mallory shook his head. "What the hell is going on here?" he asked no one in particular.

  And Detective Andrew Spurling, standing in the bathroom doorway, said, "Captain's getting a little squeamish in his old age." He chuckled.

  Mallory turned his head, fixed him with a stern gaze. "Haven't you got something to do, Detective?" he said.

  Spurling, looking offended, answered in a tone of ill-disguised surliness, "You talking to me?"

  "What did you say?" Mallory barked; he and Spurling were friends, after a fashion. They'd downed a few beers together, had bullshitted together, and their relationship was usually casual and cooperative. Mallory, however, had a very well developed sense of command, and Spurling's sudden change in attitude had taken him by surprise.

  Spurling answered, "I asked if you were talking to me. If you were talking to me, Sergeant Mallory, then you'd best show a little respect."

  Mallory was very quick. He stepped forward, grabbed Spurling by the collar, lifted him so he was on his tiptoes, and growled, "If you ever talk to me like that again, Detective, not only will I see to it that you're busted to patrolman, but I will personally break your jaw. Do you understand that? Nod once if you do."

  Spurling hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. Mallory let go of his collar. "Good," he said, "now go and do whatever it is you were hired to do." He looked past Spurling at Officer McGuire. "McGuire, where the hell is the damned ambulance?"

  And McGuire, who lately seemed to have lots of answers, responded, "It's just parking out front now, Sergeant."

  ~ * ~

  Ryerson Biergarten asked the same desk sergeant he'd talked to the previous morning, "What call is Captain Lucas on? Where?"

  And the sergeant, smiling, answered, "What are you going to do—go and watch?"

  Ryerson took a breath, counted to three silently, then said, calling up his most authoritarian tones, "This is a matter of life and death, Sergeant. If you don't cooperate with me—" He stopped. When he went on a moment later, his authoritarian tone had changed to one of urgency. "Where on Ormond Street is he? What number?"

  The sergeant was flabbergasted. "I—I never said anything . . ." He turned to the uniformed cops behind him. "Hey, you guys are witnesses, I never said anything to him about where the captain is; you'll vouch for me, right?"

  The uniformed cops, a half-dozen of them, all looked up in unison, and confusion.

  "Never mind," Ryerson said, "I know where to find him." And, with Creosote tucked under his arm, he went to his Woody, parked in front of the station, and drove north, toward Ormond Street, and the house where Lilian and Frank Janus used to live.

  ~ * ~

  "Spurling?" called Guy Mallory from the bathroom of the Janus house; two ambulance attendants had just lifted Lilian Janus onto a stretcher. "Coming through," said the lead man, and Mallory stepped out of their way, into the bedroom. "Spurling?" he called again.

  Officer McGuire, standing guard near the bedroom door, offered, "He left a few minutes ago, Sergeant."

  "He left a few minutes ago?" Mallory was incredulous. "Did he say where in the hell he was going?"

  McGuire nodded. "Yes, sir. He had to use the john downstairs, sir."

  "Uh-huh," Mallory said. "And how about Captain Lucas?"

  "He left the house, sir."

  Mallory fumed, "What is this—the Keystone Kops?"

  "Yes, sir," McGuire said.

  "Are you trying to be funny, Officer?"

  "No, sir."

  Mallory nodded at Frank Janus's naked body in front of the bed. "Cover that, would you, McGuire," he said.

  "Forensics hasn't been through here yet, sir."

  Mallory rolled his eyes. "Everyone's an expert!" he whispered.

  "Yes, sir," McGuire said.

  There were several people in the room—a police photographer who was stepping gingerly around to line up shots, a technician just beginning to dust everything in the room for fingerprints, a woman kneeling over what had been incorrectly presumed to be the corpse of Lilian Janus; the woman had a small glass specimen holder in one hand and what looked like a flat-bladed scalpel in the other; she was scraping the inside of the corpse's left arm with it.

  "Uh, miss?" Mallory said.

  McGuire offered, "She's with the M.E.'s office, Sergeant."

  "I'll ask the questions, McGuire."

  "Yes, sir."

  The woman looked around at Mallory. "I am with the Medical Examiner's Office, Detective."

  "Okay," Mallory said, "but would you mind telling me what the hell you're doing? You've got the body—what in God's name would you need with—"

  "They're fresh," the woman said, smiling an apology for interrupting him. "The scrapings are fresh tissue, more or less. It's going to be another hour, maybe two, before the M.E. starts his autopsy, and by then this body will be well into the process of degeneration. Cellular structure is very fragile, Detective, especially if you intend to do the kinds of tests with it that we think are going to be required. What we've got here is something very, very strange."

  Spurling appeared in the doorway and stopped next to McGuire. McGuire said, "Yes, sir,” and Spurling looked confusedly at him; then he grinned, pleased. "You're a good man, McGuire," he said.

  "Yes, sir," McGuire said, and the heel of his foot hit the floor.

  Mallory called sharply, "You're not in the army here, McGuire. Loosen up."

  "Yes, sir," McGuire said.

  "And cut out the damned 'yes sirs' and `no sirs.'

  "Certainly," McGuire said.

  Spurling said, "There's some bozo downstairs looking for Captain Lucas."

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ryerson, standing on the sidewalk halfway to the front porch steps at the Janus home, was fighting to maintain some appearance of composure and normalcy.

  It was a difficult fight, but so far he was winning it.

  Most of those around him were uniformed cops. Pat Farrel, the reporter for the Buffalo Evening News, was there, too, waiting impatiently for word from someone on what was going on. "Mr. Biergarten," he'd said when Ryerson had appeared at the house and had a
sked one of the uniforms if he could see Captain Lucas, "what would interest a psychic investigator here? Does this have some-thing to do with that 'psychic storm' you talked about two days ago?" and Ryerson had been forced by what he was seeing to ignore him.

  The Janus home was in a fashionable west side neighborhood. It was a big, cedar-sided contemporary house surrounded by similar houses. The lawn was elegantly manicured, the landscaping a tad ostentatious, though not overbearing, and the whole effect was one of calculated neatness, and taste.

  But that was not all that Ryerson was seeing.

  He was also seeing demons.

  Demons slavering at the windows; demons slithering through doors; demons poking their awful heads from the chimney; demons squatting beneath the shrubs.

  And for Ryerson, the really hellish thing of it all was this: he knew that these demons were real. As real as the house, as real as the grass, as real as his damned argyle socks.

  As real as Joan believed them to be.

  Murderously, obscenely real!

  They were not merely something that his incredibly sensitive and creative psyche had manufactured to give his feelings palpability—something to touch and hold on to because feelings all by themselves can slip away in an instant. That had happened before; his mind's eye had created for him what his feelings told him were real. In Boston, at a house plagued by classic poltergeist-type hauntings, he had seen the grinning head of a young girl bouncing like a basketball from room to room, and from that was able to link the hauntings to a girl of twelve who lived at the house. But that bouncing head had not been real, and he knew it the moment he saw it. It was a symbol, a representation of reality. He'd been certain of that right from the start.

  His only certainty now, in front of the Janus house, was that the world was alive with possibilities. Crawling, slithering, slavering, grinning possibilities.

  "Hey," he heard one of the uniformed cops nearby say, though to Ryerson it sounded as if the cop were a million miles away, "you wanta move back a little; this is a crime scene, you know."

  Ryerson took no notice of him.

  The demons he was seeing were much as he would have imagined them. They were thin and misshapen, fat and smooth and wrinkled, olive-colored and dull orange and very light blue; they were translucent, transparent, beaked, fanged, owl-eyed and eyeless; they crawled, they hopped, they hunkered about on thin greasy thighs; they were monkey-faced, no-faced, two-faced, motionless; they vibrated like water, they sang, they hooted, they were shrill the way bluejays are shrill; they sat on necks, on arms, on heads, their huge crooked organs dangling over noses and mouths; they smelled of the earth, and of death, and of winter air.

  They were as present as air.

  The uniformed cop said again, "Get out of the way, mister—this is a crime scene!"

  "Who the hell is he?" said another one.

  "He's looking for Captain Lucas."

  Ryerson began to lose it. His body quivered; his mouth opened and closed; his eyes watered from staying open too long.

  Guy Mallory appeared in front of him. He said, "Captain Lucas isn't here. I'll tell him you were looking for him. What'd you say your name was?"

  "Uhn…uhn," said Ryerson.

  "I didn't quite catch that," Mallory said.

  Ryerson closed his eyes tightly. "Uhn … uhn," he said again.

  "Jesus Christ, get a hold of yourself," Mallory said.

  "Rye," said a woman's voice. "Rye? Come with me. Come away from here."

  Ryerson felt, very distantly, a slight pressure on his arm.

  "Who are you?" Mallory asked.

  "My name's Joan Mott Evans. I'm a friend of Mr. Biergarten's."

  "You mean this is Ryerson Biergarten, the psychic? It was my understanding that Captain Lucas—"

  "I don't care what your understanding was," Joan said.

  Ryerson opened his eyes. "Must leave," he whispered.

  "That's my idea exactly," Joan said.

  He shook his head firmly. "No, all of us must leave here. Now!"

  "What's he, nuts?" Mallory said.

  "No," Joan answered, "he's psychic. He sees things."

  "We all have our little crosses to bear," Mallory said.

  "Leave!" Ryerson yelled. "All of you, leave this house now! Burn it, burn the whole neighborhood—get away from here!"

  Joan tugged firmly on his arm. "C'mon, Rye. We'll take your car; I'll come back for mine later."

  Ryerson let himself be led to the Woody. Joan opened the passenger door. He looked back. He could see that he had everyone's attention now. The cops, Pat Farrel, the neighbors who had gathered in a rough semi-circle around the house. And the others.

  The ones perched on heads and chimneys; the ones who hung out of windows; the ones with organs dangling in front of human noses; the ones who were translucent, burnt orange, owl-eyed and eyeless.

  And all of them were grinning at him.

  We've won, their grins said.

  "Get out!" Ryerson screamed. "Get out, get out, get out ..." And Joan pushed him into the passenger seat of the Woody, ran around to the driver's door, and climbed in.

  "Get out!" Ryerson screamed through the open window.

  The others continued to grin at him. "Keys," Joan said. "Rye, give me the keys."

  "You must leave," Ryerson screamed. "Please, you must leave!" he pleaded with the people around the Janus house.

  "Dammit, Rye, give me the keys!"

  "For your own sake, for the sake of your city—"

  Joan reached across the seat, took hold of his right lapel, and yanked hard on it so he turned his head to look at her. "Give me the keys!" she demanded.

  He looked blankly at her for several moments, as if he didn't recognize her, then he whispered, "Yes, of course, the keys," and he fished them from his pocket and gave them to her. Seconds later they were on their way back to her house.

  ~ * ~

  Benny Bloom leaned over Nurse Carlotta Scotti, asleep in her room in the psychiatric wing of Buffalo Memorial Hospital. He whispered, "I'm not myself lately, Carlotta." He paused, smiled, went on. "But I know that I love you, and that I need you and want you."

  Carlotta did not awaken. She was in the deep and dreamless sleep that sedation brings.

  Benny cooed on. "We can be very happy together, Carlotta. You and I can be very, very happy together."

  Behind him, a graceful feminine hand reached around the edge of the doorway. Then a pair of large and sensuous brown eyes peered into the room and quickly summed up what was happening in it; a pair of full red lips parted in a smile of recognition. And the mind behind the eyes said, Yes, yes, this is one of us!

  Benny Bloom heard an earthy other-side-of-the-tracks voice. "Come on over here," it said. "You want a good time, you come on over here!"

  Benny turned his head quickly from Carlotta, saw the woman in the doorway. He scowled. "Go away," he said. "You're disturbing us."

  Benny was Benny then.

  Benny was always Benny. The nerd who was the darling of the high honor roll crowd was Benny. The jock who quoted T. S. Eliot was Benny, too. He was stronger, cockier, meaner, but he was Benny. So the entity within him, the entity which had invaded his body five days earlier, did not have to work very hard. The Benny it invaded was also the Benny who turned and faced Carlotta Scotti, and he had the same eyes, the same nose, the same chin, legs, arms, and body. But he was oh so obscenely different from the Benny she had gotten to know, the Benny she had been nursing back to health. Because some changes do not have to stretch the bones and muscles.

  But it was not the same with the creature beckoning to him from the doorway. She was a fabrication, a piece of murderous manufacture—just as Loni had been, just as the murderer of bad-check-writer Warren Anderson had been, just as the woman who stuck a knife through Frank Janus's heart had been. Because what slumbers inside us sometimes does stretch the bone and muscle.

  Now that creature, that piece of murderous manufacture, stepped into Carl
otta Scotti's room, crossed it with amazing quickness and grace, and faced Benny, while in the bed behind him, Nurse Scotti stirred in her sleep: she was rising from the silent depths where the sedative had taken her, and dreams were pushing into her brain.

  Something stirred then in Benny, too. Awareness, need, recognition. His stomach quivered as the woman facing him bared her breasts, pulled his hospital gown up, and rubbed her cool, hard nipples against the hot skin of his chest. "Oh Jesus, oh God," he breathed.

  And the woman whispered at him, "Hey, honey, those two don't have nothin' to do with this." A wide smile parted her lips. She grabbed his erect penis with her right hand, and with her left she reached around and caressed his buttocks. She whispered, "C'mon now, Benny, push it in, bend down a little"—he did—"and push it in. That's right. That's good. Oh, damn, Benny, that's so good!"

  ~ * ~

  "Creosote's sick," Ryerson said. The dog was asleep on his lap, its breathing shallow and irregular.

  Joan, seated next to Ryerson on the couch, said, "What did you see at that house, Rye? Please tell me."

  He shook his head. "I don't know what I saw, Joan." A short pause. "I saw demons. I don't believe in demons, but I saw demons there."

  Joan nodded. "Yes, I saw them, too."

  He looked questioningly at her.

  She explained, "I saw something, Rye. I saw shadows." A pause. "I saw moving shadows."

  He looked away. "I—I don't . . ." he stammered.

  "No," she said. "I don't understand it, either."

  He smiled. "You're getting pretty good at this, Joan."

  "I don't welcome it," she said.

  Ryerson stood, Creosote cradled in his arms. "I'd like you to stay here, Joan. At the house. Please don't come looking for me; I think you'll be much safer here.

  "Do you know how paternal and sexist that sounds, Rye? Who had to rescue whom today?"

  He grinned at her. "You're right, of course. I'm sorry. But I would still like you to stay here. And please don't ask why.'

  "Why?" she said.

  He sighed. "Why should you stay here? Or why shouldn't you ask why you should stay here?"

  "You're a real card, Ryerson Biergarten. This isn't some grade B western, and I'm not some quivering southern belle who needs to be protected from ... from whatever it is"—she waved at the air—"that you want to protect me from. I'm an adult, I'm smart, I'm strong, and I'm fully capable of taking care of myself."