Ravenous (19 page)

He flung the rug off the opening and hurried down the stairs into the garage. He went up the steps to the door that led to the kitchen.

“Have you eaten?” Mom said.

He could smell something good cooking. “I'm not hungry yet, Mom.”

“You
will
eat, though, right?” She leaned against the counter, her vodka tonic in one hand, cigarette in the other. “I'd hate to think of you starving up there.”

“Mom, look at me. There's little chance of me starving. Where's Dad?”

“In the living room watching TV.”

Jason hurried into the living room and found his dad stretched out in his recliner, sipping his scotch and soda.

“Dad, somebody's screaming over at the Cranes' house,” Jason said.

Dad turned to him and frowned. “What? Screaming?”

“Yes, I think someone's being hurt.”

“That's their business,” Dad said, turning his eyes back to the television.

“Dad, I think maybe someone's—”

“Look.” He frowned up at Jason. “It's none of your business. Don't get involved, okay? Just leave it alone. You want to call the police, do it anonymously. You do
not
want to get involved, trust me.” He turned to the television again.

Jason turned and left the living room, angry. He should have known. His father was a diehard isolationist. “Don't get involved” was one of the creeds of his life. His father, Arthur Sutherland, Jr., was so uninvolved, he didn't even vote. He was Jason's father, and Jason loved him, but sometimes he was disgusted by him, too.

He went back out to the garage and stood at the bottom of the stairs, considering going up to his apartment and calling the police. But maybe it was nothing—maybe he hadn't heard what he thought he'd heard. He decided to step outside and listen. He crossed the garage to the door that led outside, and stepped out into the cold darkness. He wore a heavy sweater over a long-sleeved shirt, but it was still cold. He walked along the side of the garage on wet grass. It was drizzling—the very air seemed wet.
 

Jason froze when he heard a bizarre sound. It came from the west, toward the ocean. It was a high, plaintive howl.

Ar-ar-arrROOOOO!

It sounded twice.

Jason's scrotum shriveled, and gooseflesh crawled across his back like tiny insects. The sound had gone straight to the marrow of his bones.

The sound came again, but this time it was from the east, and closer.

Wolves?
he thought as a shudder passed through him.
There are no wolves around here ... are there? Dogs ... it must be dogs.

He stood there for awhile and listened, but the howls did not come again. He walked along the fence that stood between their driveway and the Cranes' driveway. At the end of the fence stood their mailbox. Jason walked between the end of the fence and the mailbox and then, hesitantly, up the Cranes' driveway, around the car, onto the walk that ran along the picture window in the front of the house, to the front door. He rang the doorbell.

He heard something in the house. A jumble of sounds. He turned his left ear toward the door and listened closer. Movement. And something else ... something ugly. Growling.

Growling?
he thought. He tried to remember if they had a dog. He knew they had a cat, but he couldn't remember the Cranes ever having a dog. That certainly wasn't a
cat
growling. Not a housecat, anyway—maybe a
big
cat, a tiger or a lion, something from the Discovery Channel, but not a housecat. He heard no more screams—

It's eating me! It's eating meee!

—or any other sounds of distress, but he felt no better. Something was definitely wrong in there.

“Hello? Anybody home?”

What a stupid thing to say,
he thought.

“Hello? It's Jason Sutherland. From next door.”

Wishing he'd brought a flashlight, he went to the front window. The drapes were wide open, and he could see into the living room. He cupped a hand to each side of his face and leaned in close, until his nose was touching the glass. He saw the couch, the chairs, the TV, the books and knick-knacks on the shelves. The new hardcover Michael Connelly book was on the end table by the couch, the newspaper lay open on the floor beside one of the chairs.

Sudden movement to the left made him gasp. So fast, it was a blur at first, then it stood before him, up close—one moment it wasn't there, and the next it was.

The feral silver eyes held Jason's wide brown ones. He could not move, could not breathe, because he was seeing something that paralyzed him with fear, something he could not understand at first. Something that could not exist.

It was tall and broad, narrow-waisted, with knees that bent backward, the enormous body covered with brown fur. Jutting from the face was a long snout filled with fangs, with a black nose, and black lips that pulled back over the fangs.

Jason's mouth hung open until he said, “Oh, my God.”

 

* * * *

 

Very little of Emily Crane was left inside the large creature that stood at the window, and what was there slept. The creature's thoughts were very simple—it thought in images and feelings rather than words.

Its hunger had been satisfied for the moment. Now it had another need—it needed to go to the house that stood vividly in its mind. It was drawn to it, pressed on by a raw sense of urgency. From Emily's buried memory, the creature extracted the route to the house.

It stood at the window. There was someone outside, standing in its way. The creature barely gave the figure outside a thought before lifting its arms.

 

* * * *

 

Jason saw a flash of claws as the creature brought its arms down hard and he jumped backward as the glass webbed for an instant, then crumbled with a resonant shattering. Through that cascade of broken glass, the thing leaped out of the living room, slammed into Jason, and knocked him backward.

Jason's back slammed to the ground, and all the air was expelled from his lungs as the thing weighed him down heavily. The creature had come down on him like a falling tree, and its harsh, gamey odor enveloped him.

Blurred flashes of claws and fangs rained down on Jason, along with a storm of searing, slicing pain.

 

 

 

25

 

The Crime Scene

 

 

Jason's warm blood dribbled into his eyes, temporarily blinding him, as the fangs sank into the upper part of his left arm. He cried out in agony as they ground into his muscle. Before it could tear out a chunk of his arm, a voice called out sharply.

Startled, the creature pulled its fangs back out of Jason's flesh and lifted its head, blood dripping from its snout and fangs, and looked in the direction of the voice, toward the road.

A gunshot exploded and Jason happened to open one eye in time to see the top half of the creature's head disappear. The body collapsed backward, off of him.

Jason crawled backward on his back, moving like a giant crab, until he was far enough away from the thing—no matter how dead it seemed—to get to his feet.

Once he was standing, he realized the thing on the lawn did not seem dead at all—it convulsed and flopped in the glow of the porch light, and something else ... it was changing. The whole thing was altering before his eyes. One moment it was covered with brown fur, the next the fur was much shorter and skin was visible, and the next it was hairless skin, a fat, shifting belly, heavy breasts that plopped back and forth, a tuft of dark hair peeking out between the tops of the broad, heavy thighs—he thought,
Jesus God is that Mrs. Crane?
—and then it was that thing again, hairy and distorted, and all the while, he could hear those awful sounds—cartilage cracking and bones breaking again and again. But other than that, the thing made no sound, because the top half of its head was gone. It made no sense—how could it still be moving, jerking and flopping around like that?

“It'll die soon.”

Jason used his right hand to wipe the blood from his eyes. The slashes on his face burned, and his left arm was paralyzed by pain—numb from the elbow down, but above that, nothing but agonizing pain. His bloody face was a mask of agony—eyes squinting, lips peeled back over his teeth, making a low groaning sound.

But he had heard the voice. He turned.

A tall man in a long black coat and old-fashioned hat, face shrouded in shadow, stood on the sidewalk in front of the house, a cane in his left hand, a shotgun in his right with the barrel pointed at the ground. His words were clipped, very precise. His voice was rough, like gravel being ground up. He turned to a dark car parked in the wrong direction behind him at the curb, its driver's side door hanging open. The man bent forward and put the shotgun in the car, then closed the door.

As the man turned back to Jason, his face was caught in the dull glow of the porch light. His right eye looked a bit larger than the left and seemed frozen in place, and his face was horribly scarred and puckered. Shadow and light played over the long scars, making them look deeper than they really were, no doubt. He walked onto the lawn and approached Jason.

“Are you badly hurt?” the man said.

Jason opened his mouth to reply, then fainted.

 

* * * *

 

As he pulled up in front of Doris's house, Hurley saw the figure standing in the yard across the street waving at him. The man waved one arm back and forth, high over his head.

Hurley flicked on his searchlight, manipulated the toggle until the light shone directly on that yard, on the tall man in the black coat and hat—

“Oh, boy,” Hurley said.

—and on what appeared to be two bodies on the lawn. He realized that was Emily Crane's address.

He'd been on his way home when Cherine in dispatch relayed Doris's call. He'd agreed to take it, figuring it was another nuisance call. He'd been fully prepared to read Doris the riot act this time.

Maybe I should arrest her,
he'd thought.
Scare her a little. Maybe then she'd think twice before calling.

His eyes on those two dark heaps on the lawn, Hurley grabbed the mike and said, “Trooper one in need of a bus and backup.” He gave his location. “I've got what appear to be two bodies, a broken window, a strange man standing in the yard waving me over—something's cooking. Let's hurry up with that backup, people, I don't know what, but something's up over here.”

He got out of the SUV, flashlight in hand, shut the door, and hurried across the street. He reached down and zipped up his green jacket—it was damned cold. His breath appeared before him then was swept away by a bone-chilling breeze as he rushed forward.

“Sheriff Ferrell Hurley,” he said to the tall man.

“This young man is need of medical attention,” the man said, leaning on the black cane with a silver handle.

Hurley eyed the man cautiously. “What happened here?” he said. He looked down at the young man on the lawn, his face bloody. He seemed to be passing in and out of consciousness. Hurley crouched down beside him and said, “I'm Sheriff Hurley. An ambulance is on the way.”

“Thuh-thanks,” the boy said, his voice hoarse.

“It should be here any minute, so don't worry, you're going to be fine,” Hurley said, standing again. He hoped he was right, for the boy's sake.

He walked over to the other body. It was moving, writhing painfully.

“He was attacked,” the man said as he came to Hurley's side. “The young man, I mean. He was attacked by that,” he said as he pointed down at the thing before them with his cane.

As Hurley stood over the body, his mouth slowly opened. He stared dumbly down at the thing on the lawn. His eyes narrowed a little as he tried to figure out what he was seeing.

It did not help.

Hurley hunkered down beside the thing on the ground because it was making sounds. He listened, wondering if it was trying to speak, but it only made sickening gurgling sounds. That was not surprising considering the fact that most of its head was gone.

He could make out a woman's body, overweight, pale—about Emily's size, build, and color—but covered with hideous sores that seemed to grow larger before his eyes, all of them red and swollen and running. Blisters rose and popped as he watched, as if the body were bubbling like a witch's cauldron.

Emily?
he thought. What remained of the face left no doubt in his mind: It was his receptionist.

The rest of the body was covered with patches of brown hair that came and went. One hand had five fingers with normal-looking nails and a wedding ring, while the other was buried in fur, and sported long, curved fingers that came to deadly points—claws with bits of red tissue clinging to them.

“It will die soon,” the man said. “It's harmless now.”

Hurley stood and said, “What the hell
is
it?”

“The answer to that question is quite lengthy, and one that you probably will not like.” Although his voice was craggy, he spoke with a crisp East Coast accent, upper crust. Even with that broken voice, he spoke as if he had marbles in his mouth. There was no contempt or haughtiness in his manner of speaking, but Hurley recognized that the possibility for it was there—it was just that kind of accent.

“Well, I—wait.” Hurley turned to fully face the man.

He wore an eye patch and his face was badly scarred.

“Who are you?” Hurley said.

The man inclined his head cordially and said, “Daniel Fargo is the name. And you, Sheriff—Harley, did you say?”

“Hurley, Ferrell Hurley.”

“You, Sheriff Hurley, are precisely the man I need to talk to. But for now, I think we should concentrate on getting this young man some help. He's bleeding.”

“An ambulance is on the way. Why are you here, Mr. Fargo?” Hurley said.