The Messenger (2011 reformat) (27 page)

More
skittering, and she frowned, slipped out of Steve's sleeping embrace. He didn't
wake up when she'd edged herself away. She stood perfectly still for a moment,
stunned by the clarity of her silhouette projected by the flood of moonlight: a
perfect razor-sharp black cutout against the wall, every hourglass line of her body,
every contour. It could've been an erotic painting, but then the painting moved
when she moved. She shook off the digression, then padded naked over to the
line on the floor. What the hell is this line? She thought, bending over to
look at it. Had Kevin drawn on the floor in crayon? No way, she felt sure. Kids
were known to do things like that, especially when they were distressed,
but...I would've seen it. There's no way I wouldn't have noticed this line if
it had been there earlier. She was absolutely certain it wasn't. Then she bent
over and touched the line.

It was wet.

Blood? No. She
winced when she sniffed her finger. It smelled foul, like something rancid. The
line could only be described as dark slime. She was going to close the window and
turn on the light, but she heard the skittering again.

Her gaze
jerked up, and she stared. Something about the size of a rat moved out of the
shadow and back onto the lit part of the floor. It was crawling as an insect
would, but it couldn't have been a palmetto bug; they simply didn't get that
big. Neither did beetles. It skittered over closer to her, and then all the air
went out of her chest when she realized what it was: a horned toad.

It...can't...be...

Her son's
horned toad was dead. Jane was sure. She saw it. She buried it. Yet this thing
on the floor was very much a horned toad and it was very much alive. It
scrabbled closer, leaving the odd trail behind it. Don't be ridiculous, she
thought. Of course, it was

a different
horned toad, a wild one. Oh, I know. It suddenly dawned on her. Steve had
bought Kevin the new horned toad, and it had simply gotten out of the
terrarium. She slipped her kimono back on, paced quickly to Kevin's room, and
looked at the small glass tank. She just needed to prove to herself that the
new toad had escaped.

But the new
toad was in the tank when she looked in.

All right, all
right, this is silly, she told herself, padding back to the living room.
Kevin's new toad hadn't escaped. So what? She was looking at the one on the
floor again. It got in from the outside, she told herself. Big deal. But-

What was that
line? That trail it left behind it as it moved across the floor?

She looked
closer at the toad. It stank, like something rotten, just like that line of
slime. She remembered what had happened to her son's toad: something had
squashed it, to the extent that its innards had been disgorged. She leaned over
even closer, cringing at the stench.

The horned
toad on the floor was dragging its guts behind it, from its mouth. That was the
cause of the slime.

"Steve!
Look! Look!" she was saying next, heart pounding. She jostled him on the
floor until he woke.

"Honey,
what is it?"

"Look at
the toad on the floor!"

He got up
groggily. "Huh?"

Jane was
pointing, frantic. When Steve looked at it, he said, "Jane, it's nothing
to get upset about. It's just-"

"It's not
the one you bought. It's the first one!"

"You said
the first one died."

"It did!
I buried it!"

Now he was
laughing under his breath. "Then this one got into the house somehow. It's
a wild one."

"No it's
NOT! It's Kevin's first one, the one my husband got him." She pointed
again, shaking. "Steve, its insides are hanging out of its mouth! The same
thing that happened to Mel! That's the same toad."

Steve's
shoulders slumped. "Then it’s one hell of a hardy toad, to be able to
crawl out of its grave after being buried alive, come back in the house, and
still be crawling around with its guts hanging out."

"That's
impossible!"

Steve put his
pants on, got a plastic cup from the kitchen, and scooted the toad into the
cup. "Stinks like the dickens, Jesus ..." He kept a palm over the
cup.

"Where
are you going with it?" Jane asked.

"I'm
gonna put it out in the yard. It's dying."

"No, you
don't understand. It was dead a few days ago."

Steve paused
to pinch the bridge of his nose. "Jane. You're telling me that you believe
this toad...came back to life?"

"I...No,
of course she wasn't. But what was she implying? All of a sudden she realized
how ridiculous she must sound. He's going to think I'm a nut! "I just
mean...well, I don't know what I mean. It's just really weird-the
situation."

"It's
late, you're tired. You probably had a bad dream and got disoriented, that's
all. I don't want to just put it in the garbage, it's still alive. And-"
Steve paused again when he lifted his hand and peeked into the cup.

"What?"
Jane asked. "It got out."

"No. Er,
I don't think so." He showed her the inside of the cup. The stench was
worse now. It was steaming. The toad didn't appear to be in the cup anymore, replaced
by a stinking black liquefaction, as if the creature had rotted down to muck in
the minute or so it had been in the cup. It looked like a cup full of waste.

Steve didn't
say anything. He went outside, down the driveway, and dropped the cup into the
garbage. When he came back, they remained silent. He took her hand and they
went to Jane's bed, their moonlight-forged shadows moving crisply across the
wall and away.

Neither of
them noticed the third, larger shadow that remained on the wall: tall, gaunt,
long-limbed. The head of the ink-black silhouette seemed oddly angled, and
horned. Then the silhouette spread as its host raised great ten-foot-long wings
behind its back, and then it disappeared with a chuckle.

I

The high sun blazed
over Jane's west branch post office, sitting in the middle of another perfect
Florida day. Wild parrots cackled, not a cloud in the sky, hot but breezy.
Customers came and went, careless and content. Everything was normal.

Jane felt
anything but normal. Last night, Steve had spent the night, but they didn't
make love again. It had been late, and the incident with the toad had knocked
the rest of their time together off kilter. I don't know what I was thinking.
What was I thinking? She simply felt bewildered, and sitting across from her
was Sarah, who looked equally bewildered, but by something else.

"It's
just so strange," Sarah said.

"Well,
what you have to understand is that Martin is a very strange man. He's always
been strange. Very antisocial, a loner. And now, obviously, a peeping
tom," Jane observed.

"So where
is he? What happened to him? Nobody's seen him since yesterday morning when you
gave him his notice, and he still hasn't come back to get his car. It's been in
the lot all night."

"Steve
thinks-"she began, but then corrected herself. She wasn't ready to let her
employees know that she was involved with the chief of police. "The police
think he left town. There's a warrant out for his arrest. It's probably all for
the best."

"Sure,
but what if he didn't? What if he's still around town, hiding somewhere? Aren't
you afraid he might come back to your house, drunk and mad as hell?"

It was a
consideration, but one she pushed away. Steve had stepped up patrols on her
street, and every cop in town was looking for Martin. She wasn't going to let
the prospect bother her. "I know, Sarah, it's a little scary, but you let
me worry about Martin. He's a harmless pervert, I'm sure. Let's just both get
back to work now."

"Okay.
See you later." Sarah walked out of the office, leaving Jane to her
thoughts. A few minutes later, one of the front clerks stepped in, Doreen
Fletcher, a young, slender brunette in her early twenties, who'd just started a
few months ago.

"Jane,
sorry to bother you, but there's a man here to see you."

A man? It
must've been Steve. "Thanks, Doreen. Just tell him to come in. He knows he
doesn't have to knock."

Doreen went
back in the hall. "Ms. Ryan's right in there, sir. Just go on in."

"Thank
you," came the reply.

That voice,
Jane thought. It's definitely not Steve. But she was certain she'd heard the
voice before.

Then a tall,
imposing figure entered the office, and when Jane took one look, she knew. Long
dark hair with some streaks of gray, trimmed beard, a dark and tidy but rather
out-of-date suit.

Alexander
Dhevic, Jane thought.

"Ms.
Ryan? Jane Ryan?" he asked. "I apologize if this is inconvenient, but
it's essential that I speak with you. My name is-"

"Come in,
Professor Dhevic," Jane said.

II

Claudette
Peterson heard the doorbell from the auxiliary speaker her husband had wired to
the back deck. It was easy for him-he was a successful electrical
contractor-and they were tired of missing visitors when they were lounging by
the pool. Claudette never tanned well, her only disappointment with Florida;
she was a flaming redhead with flawless white skin sprayed with freckles. But
nature had graced her with a slim, voluptuous body that made bikinis
irresistible for her-she simply used copious amounts of sunblock. She groaned
in the lounge chair when the doorbell rang, put her margarita down, and went
through the house to the door, skin shining from all that oil, her hair tied up
in a scarf. Her nipples constricted when she passed from the outside heat to
the inside air-conditioning.

"Yes?"
she said, opening the door.

It was the
mailman. Not the usual one; one she'd never seen.

"I have a
telegram for you, Mrs. Peterson," the carrier said. "I need you to
sign for it. Right there at the x"

"Oh, of
course." A telegram? Claudette didn't think she'd ever received a telegram
in her life-she didn't even know what they looked like. "I hope it's
nothing serious," she said, concerned. Telegrams were usually bad news,
weren't they? A death notification, a relative in a car accident, or some such
crisis. Her husband was safely at work, an office job,and her parents had died
years ago. She did have a few relatives spread out over the country, but she
was close to none of them.

The mailman
handed her a clipboard. "Just sign at the x, please."

When she took
the clipboard, she frowned. The mailman was staring at her body, feeling her up
with his beady eyes. Great, was her cynical thought. She was realistic, of
course. She could have put a robe on before answering the door, or wrapped a
towel around her. I guess I'm getting what I asked for. His stare made her
distinctly uncomfortable but-if I don't like it, I shouldn't wear stuff like
this around other people. Her peach-hued bikini couldn't even be called a
thong, it was more g-string than anything, the cups of the bra minuscule, and
the shiny polyester patch down below stretched so tightly across the triangle
of her crotch, very few details of her sex were left unrevealed.

Goosebumps
crawled up her back when she returned the clipboard. The mailman was staring
directly at her crotch. He was grinning.

"I don't
appreciate that," she said.

"Don't
dress like a stripper if you don't want to be stared at by men." He
couldn't have replied more rudely. "Christ, lady, your pussy looks like
you painted it."

Claudette was
revolted. The man was almost drooling! "You're not the regular mailman.
What's your name? I'm reporting you."

"My
name's Martin Parkins, and guess what, bitch? I don't even work for the post
office any more. So go ahead and report me."

"Martin
Parkins," she repeated. She wouldn't forget, and she was going to call the
police, too. Was he impersonating a postal employee? That sounded like a
federal offense. But if so...

What was this
slip of paper in her hand?

"At least
read your telegram before you report me," the man said.

Claudette
looked at the paper. It was no telegram, it was just a sheet of Xerox paper on
which had been scrawled: welcome to hell.

Then Claudette
screamed, but only for a second. Martin had shoved her backward into the room and,
almost instantly, from behind, a hand clamped over her mouth. Someone else had
already gotten in the house! But the hand...

What in God's
name? she thought.

There was
something wrong with the hand. It wasn't normal. It stank, it was covered in
slime, and the long thing fingers seemed to have more joints than a normal
hand. Her eyes bulged as she was held in place by the second intruder, but then
it occurred to her-in sheer horror-that several other men must be in the room,
because she could feel more hands wrap around her from behind, molesting her. A
half dozen more hands at least. Who were these people?