Cat's Cradle

by William W. Johnstone

  She glared at Kenny, not believing what he had just told her. “Are you telling me you can’t find any dirt on Dan Garrett?”

  Kenny shook his head. He looked like a large frog. A very ugly frog. He would have looked a great deal better had he done something with his hair, long, fine, and stringy. Kenny was not the type long hair enhances. He looked like an ugly hairy frog. Without warts. And a frog had more scruples.

  “The man is Mister Clean,” Kenny repeated. “His service record is spotless.”

  “Army super-spook,” Mille spat the words. She didn’t like military types either. Uniform lovers. Just as bad as pigs. Maybe worse. An army type had beat up her older brother once. After her brother had spat on the sergeant.

  “He had to have screwed up in college,” Mille persisted.

  “Well, he didn’t. I tell you the man is clean.”

  “No wild frat parties? No chasing women? No hard drinking? Come on Kenny!”

  “Garrett didn’t belong to any frat house. He didn’t have time. He worked his way through the university. He has maintained a three-beer limit ever since he was old enough to drink. I don’t believe the man has ever been drunk. He’s a top-notch lawman, Mille. You’re wasting your time and your money.”

  “It’s my time and my money, Kenny,” she reminded him.

  Kenny shrugged. She could well afford it. No sweat there.

  “Don’t tell me that hotdog hick sheriff has never had a fling with another woman?”

  “Solid family man, Mille.”

  “Bull!”

  Kenny shook his head. “I tell you, Mille, I’ve checked him from head to toe. Nothing.”

  “All right. Maybe. He never had a prisoner abused in his jail?”

  “Yes. One.”

  “Ah-hah!”

  “He fired the deputy who beat the prisoner and then brought charges against the man.”

  “Damn!” Mille looked disgusted.

  “I’d give it up, Mille.”

  “No way. All right. Let’s go after his family. How about his kids?”

  “Clean. Neither one uses any type of drugs and very little alcohol. The oldest son is a junior at the university. The daughter is in high school. They’re clean.”

  “I suppose the son is going to be a cop like his father?”

  “That is correct.”

  “What’s the daughter going to do?”

  “That, I couldn’t say.”

  “How about Garrett’s wife? She married a pig, there can’t be much to her.”

  “Clean, Mille. Solid and respected.”

  “Too good to be true. Kenny, you know as well as I do, everybody has dirt.”

  Kenny drained his beer and popped open another, taking a toke on a joint. He offered the joint to Mille. She hit on it and passed it back.

  “What’s the matter, Mille?”

  She waved him silent and sat for a time, staring at the motel wall and its tacky paintings. Her mind was busy, hard at work. Had Mille been a bit more moral, had her attitude not been misdirected by the older brother (who had been a dope-head, a pusher, a thief, a violent demonstrator back in the ’60’s, and who finally met his end from a policeman’s gun), Mille could have been and probably would have been a much more respected world-class reporter, for she was brilliant, with a fine mind. The fact that her brother had pulled a knife on the cop didn’t matter; the fact that the cop had done his best to talk the young man into dropping the knife didn’t matter; the fact that her brother had a rap sheet in a dozen cities didn’t matter; the fact that her brother had jumped bond, broke probation and skipped didn’t matter. He was her brother, and he could do no wrong. What had happened to her brother was not her brother’s fault. Oh, no. It was society’s fault. It was the fault of the cops. The system. But not the fault of her brother.

  “All right,” Mille finally broke the silence. “A multi-tined instrument. That’s what the stupid sheriff said. But the rumors are the people were scratched as well. My brother was going to Columbia in ’65. I remember him telling me about a rash of murders in the city. And something else, too. What was it?” She smiled. “Got it! the bodies were scratched and drained of blood. And partially eaten. By both human and animal. And in one case, at least, the flesh around the wound had . . . decayed? No. Aged!”

  Mille sat straight up in her chair. She said, quoting Doctor Ramsey, “His action seems to have stopped the aging process. Do you suppose, just maybe, the same thing that happened in New York City is, or has happened in Ruger County?”

  “Mille, I don’t believe in spooks and hants and all that stuff.”

  “Well, I do, Kenny. At least I believe in the unexplained.” She wrote him a check. She could afford it. Her parents had sued the city after the cop shot and killed her darling, precious, wonderful brother-and won. Since Mille adored her sibling they had given the money to her.

  “You get to New York City. You find out everything and anything you can about those murders. Then get back here fast.”

  Kenny was gone within the hour.

  Kenny had majored in journalism, but soon discovered he was not very good at it. He completed his major, however, earning his extra money by working part-time for a local private detective.

  Kenny had found his true talent. Snooping. Spying. Meddling. Prying. Making a pest of himself until his prey would say anything just to get rid of the ugly, freaky looking little guy.

  Mille stretched out on the bed and smoked another joint. She smiled a grim smile of satisfaction.

  “Now, Sheriff,” she muttered. “Now, I’m going to nail your ass—but good!

  * * *

  The creature stumbled through the thinning woods. It was almost to the edge of Valentine’s city limits. It lifted its head and surveyed the situation through slanted yellow eyes. Its head ached. The head had every right to ache. The brain was full of pus and corruption, eating away at the mass of once intelligent matter. The face had changed as well as the eyes. The skin was now wrinkled and dark. From the neck down, a thick pelt of long dark hair had grown. The shirt it had worn had grown very uncomfortable, so the creature had ripped it off, tossing it aside. The trousers were torn and ragged, flapping with every step, exposing the hairy legs.

  Thick drool leaked past the creature’s lips, dripping down on its hairy chest. It shook its aching head and snarled. The stinking drool flew from its lips.

  The creature stumbled across the deserted highway and slipped unnoticed into a wooded area near a field, which lay behind a residential area near the outskirts of Valentine. Something clicked and bounced metallically as the creature lurched across the blacktop. A small pin that had been attached to the thing’s belt fell onto the road. It was a pin denoting ten years of faithful service and attendance to a local church.

  Congratulations, Eddie Brown.

  Welcome back.

  8

  Monday morning.

  The ringing of the phone jarred Dan out of the first really good night’s sleep he’d had in two weeks. He fumbled for the phone and succeeded in knocking it off the night stand onto the floor.

  Muttering low curses, while Vonne smothered her giggles beside him, Dan found the receiver and stuck it to his ear—upside down. He reversed it and grumbled his hello.

  “How terribly enthusiastic,” Vonne said.

  “Sheriff? This is Andy downtown.”

  “Yeah, Andy. What’s up?”

  “Ah, Sheriff. We kinda got ourselves into a sort of a bind here. One of the chief’s neighbors, Mizzus Milford, she called chief about an hour ago and said for him to get right over to her back yard, ’cause there was some sort of big creature out there. The chief went over to take a look-see.”

  Dan waited. He could not understand the edgy feeling that had suddenly gripped him. “All right, Andy. So?”

  “He never came back, Sheriff. His phone don’t answer, and don’t nobody answer the phone over to Mizzus Milford’s house.”

  Unexpected sweat popped out on Dan’s fore
head. Something ugly and slimy and ancient touched his inner belly. It uncoiled and roamed around before once more settling down.

  It isn’t over, Dan thought. Goddamnit, it isn’t over! It’s back!

  “You there, Sheriff?”

  “Yeah, Andy. Getting into my pants now. I’ll call my office and we’ll be right over to check it out. You want to meet us there?”

  “There ain’t nobody here but me, Sheriff,” the old man replied.

  And you’re too old to be wearing a badge and you’re scared and only doing this to supplement your not-enough-to-live on income, Dan thought. And I don’t blame you for being frightened.

  Dan had argued for ten years for the town of Valentine to contract out the sheriff’s department; let them handle both city and county. Dan’s personnel were all much better trained and much better equipped. A growing number of communities were choosing to go that route and it was working out well.

  But Valentine resisted. Maybe someday, Dan always said.

  “Sheriff?”

  “Yeah, Andy. Pulling on my boots. You stay put. I’ll take care of it.”

  “Thanks, Sheriff. It’s probably nothing, right?”

  Don’t bet on it. “Sure, Andy. Check with you later.”

  He felt Vonne’s eyes on him in the darkness of the bedroom. He turned to look at her. “Trouble, Dan?”’

  “I think so.” He reached for the phone, then pulled his hand back. He’d call dispatch from his car.

  Rolling, he radioed in and asked who was working this section of the county, telling dispatch to have them meet him at the Milford house.

  He drove through the dark quiet streets. He could not explain nor fully shake away the eerie feeling that had somehow attached itself to him, clinging to his flesh like a huge, invisible leech. Once, he stopped and pulled down his pump sawed-off shotgun, making sure the tube was filled. Buckshot. Three inch magnums.

  He drove on.

  For a rural area, with not a large county population, Dan had argued and fought and bullied and finally succeeded in building his deputy force into a respectable number. He had ten, fully trained and fully equipped full-time deputies. Eleven, counting Chuck Klevan, the chief deputy sheriff of the county. Dan’s personnel were all graduates from the university’s criminal law and law enforcement training programs, and three had been through the FBI’s training school. Dan made certain his people were the best he could find-for the money paid-and that all stayed abreast of the ever-changing laws and procedures.

  Deputy Susan Dodd was working this end of the county this night, Ruger County’s only female deputy sheriff. But Susan was a very good deputy, asking for and receiving no more slack than any of the other deputies received—which from Dan Garrett, was damn little. Susan had spent three years in the Army, working as an MP. While she was not a large woman, there was no backup in her, and she would use her baton very quickly, as some of the rowdier residents of Ruger County had painfully discovered when they attempted to hassle and intimidate her. That, plus the fact she was belted in both judo and karate, made her a dangerous person with which to attempt any type of hostility.

  Susan was waiting at the Milford house. She got out of her patrol car and met Dan on the sidewalk.

  The dark sleeping homes stood sightless and quiet on both sides of the residential street. Behind the chief’s house, and Mrs. Milford’s home, lay a large field.

  “I haven’t checked it out, Sheriff. I was waiting for you. But just listen for a moment. Can you feel it?”

  Dan stood very still, all senses tuned. He knew what his deputy meant. That intangible feeling that any good street cop soon develops. Nobody was alive inside the Milford home.

  “I sense it, Susan. Pray we’re both wrong.”

  “I already did, Sheriff.”

  Dan climbed the steps and tried the doorbell first, leaning on the button for two full fifteen second rings. He waited. Nothing. The house remained dark and silent.

  “You check out the chief’s house, Susan. He’s a widower,” Dan reminded her.

  Dan stood on the large porch while Susan checked out the house next door. She checked it thoroughly. She was back at the Milford house in a few minutes.

  “Nobody inside that house, Sheriff,” she reported. “The chief’s bed is rumpled and his sidearm is gone from its holster. His car is parked in the garage. The engine is cold.”

  “All right. I’ve tried the doorknob. It’s locked. Get your shotgun from your car.”

  Riot gun in her hands, Susan rejoined Dan in front of the Milford home.

  “Take the left side of the house,” Dan told her. “I’ll work the right. Give me a whistle when you reach the end of the house. Let’s not blow holes in each other.”

  Susan nodded.

  They split up, working their way cautiously down the side of the house, the beams from heavy duty flashlights spotting the way, working left and right.

  Susan whistled.

  “What’d you have?” Dan called.

  “Blood, Sheriff. A lot of it.”

  Dan quickly joined her and knelt down, careful not to disturb the scene before him. They both saw the torn and bloody bits of a nightgown. And saw and smelled the stinking drool. Dan shifted his flashlight, the beam picking up strands of long dark hair caught on the branches of the shrubbery.

  Susan sniffed the air, her nose wrinkled at the foulness. “What is that smell?”

  “I don’t know, it’s coming from that stuff,” he said, pointing to the drool. “Don’t touch it.” He looked up as lights clicked on in the neighboring house. “Sheriff’s Department!” Dan yelled. “Leave your lights on but don’t come outside.”

  “Yes, sir!” a man called.

  Dan looked again at the white, ropy looking drool. He shook his head. “Stuff’s making me sick. Susan, check the Milford house. Use the phone to call dispatch. Get Chuck over here.”

  “Do I call City, too?”

  “Not yet.”

  Then Dan was alone, squatting by the pools of blood, the drool, and the mangled bits of nightgown. He knew what those other pale and crimson bits were on the ground, too. Torn pieces of human flesh.

  He felt eyes on him; the sensation turning his sweat cold. He slowly swung around, standing up, his eyes searching the gloom and the dark pockets of shadows. He automatically checked to see if his shotgun was off safety. Cop’s reflex action. The bushes at the rear of the house rattled drily. A groan drifted to him.

  “Nick?” Dan called. “Nick Hardy!”

  Another pain-filled groan. It was human-sounding, but just barely.

  Dan could not see the long dark shape slowly slithering its way toward him, staying close to the hedgerow by the side of the house.

  Dan heard no more groaning. He did hear a faint hissing sound. He looked around him. Nothing. The back door opened and Susan stepped out.

  “Andy had already called Chuck. They’re rolling. I thought I heard a groan out here.”

  “You did. So did I. And something else too.”

  “What?” “

  “I don’t know. Turn on the outside lights.”

  The back yard was filled with light. But the light only served to darken and deepen the pockets of shadows around the bushes and hedges of the huge old back yard.

  A scream of pure anguish came from the rear of the yard.

  “Shit!” Susan said, nervousness in her voice.

  “Oh, Jesus God!” the hidden and mysterious . . . voice called. “Help me!”

  “Nick!” Dan shouted, unable to pinpoint the location of the voice. It was weak and hollow-sounding.

  “Sheriff!” Susan called. “Look!”

  Dan whirled around, looking in the direction Susan was pointing.

  His stomach rolled a time or two and then his cop’s mind willed it to settle down.

  A mangled and partially eaten human leg lay next to the hedgerow. The multi-colored house slipper was still on the foot.

  Susan and Dan both heard the faint so
unds of hissing.

  The sounds did nothing to sooth already stretched and jangled nerves.

  An inhuman howl ripped the night just as headlights flashed, swinging into the driveway of the Milford house.

  Car doors clinked shut. “Dan?” Chuck called. “It’s Chuck and Billy.”

  “Shotguns, both of you!” Dan called. “Be careful. I don’t know what we’re up against.”

  That howling again.

  “What in the hell is that?” Billy called.

  “I don’t know. But something has eaten Mrs. Milford, and maybe the chief, too,” Dan called.

  “Jesus!” Chuck said.

  The hissing came again, much closer.

  “Look out!” Susan called. Her shotgun roared in the night. Dan whirled around and caught a glimpse of the most hideous thing he had ever seen, outside of a horror movie. It was ... Christ! he couldn’t begin to describe it.

  It was a man. He thought. Naked from the waist up. And covered with long hair.

  Dan lifted his shotgun and pulled the trigger, knowing when he did he had missed. The man—for want of a better word-howled and hissed as he disappeared.

  “Chuck, Billy!” Dan called. “Cover the north side.”

  “What the hell are we lookin’ for?” Chuck called.

  Dan hesitated. “It’s man-sized. Naked from the waist up. Covered with long hair. Dark wrinkled face.”

  Billy looked at Chuck. “Is he serious?”

  Dan heard that. “Move!” he roared, shoving another shell into his shotgun. He wanted it fully loaded. He would have liked to have had a flame thrower. Maybe a bazooka. A platoon of Green Berets would be nice, too.

  Dan ran to the rear of the Milford yard. He almost lost what was left of his supper.

  Nick Hardy’s intestines lay on the ground and hanging in the bushes in bloody gray ropy strands. Dan’s eyes found the chief. The flesh from one arm was chewed off; the flesh from one leg chewed off, from ankle to knee. The whiteness of bone shone in the dim light. A great gaping hole was all that was left of the man’s stomach. Blood was splattered all over the dewy grass.