Richard rushed past me, his eyes passing through mine. His were fixed with the hunter’s glare, focused intently on the kill. I could hear his quickened breath, feel his pulse thumping as his blood flowed over my own, hastening my retreat, pressing me back protectively as he clawed his way to the surface of our being. In seconds it was over and the darkness swept across my consciousness, closing off my immediate existence.
What followed came in the form of a dream, and as with many of my dreams, I was an observer standing on the threshold, more a witness than a participant.
The detective was sitting forward on the sofa, his pistol drawn. He was leaning on his thighs, staring down, waiting. Once in a while, the tip of his tongue moved over his lips. It looked like the head of a tiny snake peering out, exploring the surface of its nest and then quickly retreating. It didn’t surprise me. Surely snakes and rats, vermin and reptiles of all sorts lived within the caverns of this horrendous creature, this tumor on the face of creation. The detective was merely the shell around it now.
As if to emphasize that very fact, the detective’s head began to rise. I saw the skin on his neck stretch with the strain. Finally, the skin snapped. He didn’t bleed. All of his blood had been sucked in to the feed the rodents and the reptiles. When he lowered his neck again, his head dropped off and shattered on the floor, the eyes rolling away like two marbles. Bones and teeth shattered to gray-white slivers.
Out of the opening in his neck emerged a raw, red, bullet-shaped glob of pulsating flesh embossed with green and blue veins. It bubbled at the surface and began to take form. Diamond-shaped bone-white eyes appeared. Beneath them, the flesh sunk in two small circles to form what looked to be a nose. The mouth came more slowly as the flesh ripped apart. Strings of it held on as if to keep it from forming. Gradually, they snapped and the opening grew larger. Teeth appeared—long, very white, yet not quite fangs. Within, the tongue curled and twisted like a writhing worm that had had half of its body crushed into the ground.
It was fitting that he would be this ugly, as ugly as nightmares, as ugly as sin. Janice once told me he takes so many different forms because he has no form he can call his own; he is whatever we see him as, whatever evil is within us—that’s the evil we see, and since we all have different sorts of evil and different amounts of it, he is different to each of us.
He lifted his hands from his thighs and the ends of his fingers popped off to make way for the emerging gray nails, each looking sharper than the one before it. In fact, everywhere the detective’s skin was visible, it split or peeled to make way for him. His hot body burned through the possessed one. He no longer had reason to keep himself hidden.
Steam rose from the shoulders of the detective’s jacket and out from under the cuffs in his pants. The air around him simmered. The furniture and the floor began to smoke as his blistering body singed and burned. He had brought a piece of hell with him. It was as Janice had said: “Everywhere he goes, there is hell. It’s his baggage; he carries purgatory on his shoulders.”
When he opened his mouth wider, I saw fires burning. I could hear the screams of agony coming from the souls he had captured and swallowed. I realized that with every acquisition, he grew more powerful, more vibrant and more formidable. Fearful in my dream, I stepped back from the window. I was afraid he could see me and had the power even to reach through dreams to grasp souls.
But when Richard entered the room from behind him, he did not see him as I saw him. He saw him as the detective, just a man as vulnerable as any other man. I wanted to shout out to warn him, but it was better for Richard that he did not see him as I saw him. He experienced no fear, only anger.
Swiftly, he moved across the room and came up behind the detective. Just before he brought his arm around the detective’s neck, the detective began to stand and turn. But Richard didn’t hesitate. He caught him in a choke hold and drew him back quickly. The detective raised his pistol and fired blindly, missing. With his other hand, Richard seized the gun and the struggle centered on that first.
Richard’s strength was far greater than the detective’s, even with the devil possessing him. He turned the gun down and the next time it fired, the bullet shattered the detective’s breast. His resistance waned. Richard tightened his choke hold, and the detective’s eyes began to bulge. His face reddened, but he was able to manage a cry.
Pathetically, because the devil faced defeat and began to withdraw, my detective cried out my name.
“Clea!”
I covered my ears when he cried out again. My poor detective—charming, vulnerable, witty, strong—everything I had dreamed my lover should be. I wondered about that last kiss we had shared. Had it been the devil’s or my poor detective’s? I would never know for sure.
And I would never know love, not the way the inferiors knew it, I thought. It saddened me to understand even though it was that very same longing that had brought me to this point. Our dreams, our hopes were really our particular curses. Pain came only from what we longed for and could not have. If we longed for nothing, we would suffer nothing.
But then we would be like the Stoics, like Sylvia’s kind, never unhappy, true; but never happy. The paradox was our curse, a curse we shared with the inferiors.
I laughed, a mad laugh. One of the greatest lovers on earth, I would never know love the way I longed to know it. My mother had come to realize the same thing, and when she had realized it, she had embraced death, choosing to live in eternal damnation for one moment of earthly love.
I turned from the window of my dream grateful for Richard, rejoicing now in what we were. I was stronger than my mother. I embraced myself instead of the phantom, the illusion of perfect love. Instead, I returned to self-love in the greatest form it could take. I returned to the Androgyne.
I awoke in my own bed. I felt invigorated, well rested. I had no idea how long I had been asleep after metamorphosis until I looked at the clock and realized it was the next day. After I showered and dressed, I went to Richard’s room and found it had been restored. All his things were back in place and it was as neat and as clean as ever—the towels properly folded, his suits and pants pressed and clean. Even his toothpaste was as it had been. It was almost as if everything that had happened since I had come into this room and taken it apart was merely a dream.
I went to the guest bedroom and looked in the bathroom, but Sylvia’s body was gone. There wasn’t even a trace of blood on the tub.
Of course, there was no sign of the detective, nothing to indicate he had ever been there. Except … Richard’s diary was on the table by the sofa where the detective had been reading it. The last letter was back in the diary.
I went to the front door and looked outside and saw my car had been replaced with one just like it. Richard’s Thunderbird was parked alongside it. Everything seemed to be as it had been; everything in place, ready, waiting.
I looked up; it was a warm day. The sun was peeping through the haze, burning it off. It would be a wonderful day. I was filled with so much energy, so much eagerness to do things, go places.
There were dozens of people to see. I had to call the studio to let them know I would be in; I was all right. I couldn’t wait to act again. Suddenly, the camera, the lights, the makeup and sets, all the illusions were more exciting than ever.
I closed the door and went back through the house, making a mental list of all the things I had to do today. I had to find someone, preferably another Stoic, to replace Sylvia, of course; that is, if Richard hadn’t already. I suspected he might have. He seemed to have taken care of everything.
Sure enough, when I walked into the kitchen, I found a note on the kitchenette.
“I made some inquiries and interviewed a prospective replacement for Sylvia. Her name is Bianca and she appears to be quite adequate. She will be here this afternoon. Don’t worry. She has a key.”
The note was signed, “Love, Richard.”
We would truly look after each other until time took him from
me and me from him.
EPILOGUE
IN HER WILL Alison had chosen to leave me the most precious gift of all—she revealed the whereabouts of her and Richard’s child. She lived in Manhattan Beach with an androgynous woman who was about my age: Adrian Raven, an attorney.
On a beautiful Saturday morning a little more than a month after Alison’s funeral, I called Adrian before driving down for a visit. The child, now an adolescent on the verge of her conversion, was walking the beach. Adrian had told her I was coming to visit, but she hadn’t told her much more.
“I didn’t have to,” she said. “It’s why we named her Sage. She’s a remarkable girl, precocious, wise, often clairvoyant, and, as you will soon see, quite beautiful. We’re all very proud of her.”
We spoke a little about Alison and Nicholas, as well as other Androgyne we knew. Adrian was a very bright and successful attorney. She had a beautiful beach house. Alison had placed the child well, I thought.
“What does she know? What have you told her?”
“I never told her she wasn’t my daughter,” Adrian said. “I didn’t have to. One night just recently, while we were sitting out here after dinner, she turned to me and said it herself. Naturally, when I didn’t deny it, she asked about her real mother and I told her the truth. I had the sense that she would discover it on her own anyway.”
“How did she take it?”
“With that same quiet acceptance she takes nearly everything. It hasn’t changed our love for each other. She hugged me to her and said I would always be her mother and she would always love me as much as she could love a mother.
“I’m very glad I adopted her,” she continued. “It would break my heart to lose her.”
“Oh, I’m not here to take her from you,” I said. “You must not worry about that.”
“I’m happy to hear it. She knows all about you. Instinctively, she has followed your career from the moment she could read.”
“Really?” I looked to the beach. “Sage,” I said.
“Yes. Why don’t you go to her? She’s waiting for you, I’m sure.”
I thanked her and walked down to the beach. The water was rolling in gently, the whitecaps barely a foot high. At first I didn’t see her, and then suddenly, there she was. She looked so much like Alison, she took my breath away. But as I drew closer, I saw she had Richard’s eyes. It gave me the strangest, and yet most wonderful feeling. It was as if I were meeting Richard for the first time outside myself.
“Hello,” I said.
“Hello. You’re as beautiful in person as you are on the screen. More beautiful,” she added.
“Thank you. You’re becoming a very attractive young lady yourself. You look a lot like your mother.”
“Did you know her well?”
“Oh yes. We were the best of friends. We grew up together, went to school together and lived together for a while in New York.”
“I want to go to New York someday too,” she said.
“You will, I’m sure.”
“Adrian’s taking me there for a visit next summer, but I think I want to live there.”
“You’re going to want to live in many places.”
She laughed.
“I know. I feel that way already … about everything. Is it unnatural?”
“Oh no.”
“I want to taste everything, see everything, do everything. Adrian laughs at me and says I flit about like a bird, but I can’t help it. Sometimes, I wake up in the middle of the night and my heart is pounding for no reason.”
I smiled.
“That’s not unusual. It happened to me the same way.”
“Did it? Adrian says that too, but…” She stared at me. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time. I’m so happy you’ve come.”
“I’m happy I’m here.”
“Will you tell me about my mother?”
“I’ll tell you everything I can.”
“Will we be good friends? Oh, I don’t mean as friendly as all Androgyne are to each other. I mean special friends.”
“Of course.”
“Did you come now because it’s almost my time?”
“I suppose, although to be honest, I didn’t plan it.”
“It’s wonderful how things just happen for us sometimes, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, and I had to laugh at her exuberance. How much she reminded me of myself now.
“Let’s walk along the beach and talk. Will you hold my hand?”
“I’d love to,” I said and took her soft hand into mine. Then I hugged her to me.
“Are you going to stay overnight?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Very much. I think … maybe it might happen tonight and I’d want you to be here to meet him.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know,” she whispered, “I know something that Adrian says usually doesn’t come until after the conversion.”
“Really? What?”
“I know his name. It’s just there; it’s always been there like an egg waiting to hatch.”
I laughed. “It could be.”
“Oh, it is.”
“What is his name?”
“Richard,” she said. “Do you think I’m right?”
“Yes. I do.”
“You know a lot, don’t you? Will you tell me all you can? Will you?”
“I’ll tell you everything.”
“It is going to happen tonight,” she stated firmly. “I’m sure now. And do you know,” she said as we continued down the beach, “I’m not afraid … not anymore … now that you’re here.”
I hugged her to me again.
A tern swooped down before us, then soared toward a passing cloud. In the distance we could see a sailboat emerging on the horizon.
And suddenly I felt there was nothing as precious as life, and nothing as confusing.
About the Author
Andrew Neiderman was born in Brooklyn and grew up in New York’s scenic Catskill Mountains region. A graduate of the University at Albany, State University of New York, from which he also received his master’s in English, Neiderman taught at Fallsburg Junior-Senior High School for twenty-three years before pursuing a career as a novelist and screenwriter. He has written more than forty thriller novels under his own name, including The Devil’s Advocate, which was made into a major motion picture for Warner Bros., starring Al Pacino, Keanu Reeves, and Charlize Theron, and is in development as a stage musical in London. Neiderman has also written seventy New York Times–bestselling novels for the V. C. Andrews franchise. He lives with his family in Palm Springs, California. Visit him on Facebook and at www.neiderman.com.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1992 by Andrew Neiderman
Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox
ISBN: 978-1-4976-9001-1
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
www.openroadmedia.com
ANDREW NEIDERMAN
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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The Need Page 24