Ravenous (18 page)

She smiled, then left them alone.

Hurley said, “So, we're back to, uh ... nothing.”

George shrugged. “I just calls ‘em like I sees ‘em, boss.”

Hurley sighed. “I got a fucking serial rapist going around—he struck again last night, by the way—and I got an I don't
know
what going around slicing people up.”

“Sucks to be you.”

“People are going to start to catch on that something's up,” Hurley said. “I'm going to get questions from the press—what am I saying, I'm
already
getting questions from the press. Dooley called from the
Herald
. Said, ‘What's going on, Ferrell? Do we have some kind of psycho on the loose?' I laughed and joked around a little, then told him when I knew something, I'd let him know. But one more body shows up like that and they're going to be circling me like vultures over a slaughterhouse. Not just the papers, either, but every television station within a hundred miles, maybe those hyperactive cable networks if my luck is
really
bad.”

He tasted his soup, but suddenly he wasn't very hungry anymore. A few minutes ago, his stomach had been growling—but that was before he'd started thinking about his situation. The soup was good, he just didn't feel like eating it anymore.

Frowning, Hurley said, “What am I doing here?”

“Having a late lunch.”

“I'm not hungry. And I've got things to do. Maybe I should make some calls, see if there've been any circuses or animal shows in any of the surrounding area. Does Eureka have a zoo?”

“I don't know.”

“Maybe some big animal got loose. A bear. I figured it'd be a bear the lab came up with, something like that.”

“Well, a bear could easily do that much damage, like I said. I talked to a couple people, though, and there hasn't been a bear sighting near town in a lot of decades. But if it were a bear, that would be bear fur, don't you think?”

“I'm not going to rule it out. Look, I've got to get back to the station. I don't feel right sitting here now. Too much going on.” Hurley scooted out of the booth.

“See you later,” George called.

Still frowning, Hurley said, “Yeah,” as he left the restaurant and got back into his SUV. He drove back to the station wearing a deep frown.

 

 

 

24

 

Screams and Bloodshed

 

 

Hugh was tired when he got home from work. He'd shown houses all day in the rain to a newlywed couple from Los Angeles looking for a nice place to raise their kids. It was all they talked about all day, the kids they were going to have. The kids themselves couldn't have been more annoying than their eager parents-to-be. And
nothing
was good enough. No matter how much they liked a house initially, it just wasn't right for them. By the end of the day, he was sick of them both, and he was happy to go home.

He parked in the garage, took the three steps up to the door to the laundry room. He went inside, and passed through into the kitchen.

Immediately, he sensed that something was wrong. The house was dead-silent. He stood in the kitchen and listened, and heard nothing.

“Hello?” he called as he took off his coat. He started across the kitchen, but stopped when something caught his eye in the two-basin sink. He frowned down at the clumps of raw hamburger in the bottom of the left basin. Some of it looked as if it had been vomited up. The rest of it looked like it had just come from the package, which was on the counter beside the sink—a white Styrofoam tray with just a little blood pooled in one corner, the plastic cover tossed aside. Blood speckled the counter.

He walked into the living room and went to the small foyer, where he hung his coat in the closet. “Emily? Kids?”

“Up here!” Emily's voice cried from upstairs.

Hugh went up the stairs and started down the hall. The overhead lights were on and something red caught his attention. There was a smear of what appeared to be blood on the bathroom door. He frowned as he reached out for the doorknob to open it.

“Hugh?” Emily called from the master bedroom down the hall.

He turned to her voice, his hand two inches from the doorknob. He'd assumed she was in the bathroom because the door was not normally shut unless it was occupied. When he heard her, he continued on down the hall.

“Whose blood is on the bathroom door?” he said as he entered the bedroom.

The covers of their bed had been pulled back, and Emily lay naked and waiting, hands locked behind her head. She smiled as she said, “The kids are gone.”

But there was something different about her, about the way she spoke—too fast, too urgently. Her eyes were wide with too much white showing, her smile too big.

“Fuck me, Hugh,” she said.

He tried to smile. “Look, honey, I'm tired right now. All I want to do is—”

“No, really, fuck me, please. I
need
it.”

“Emily, I'm trying to tell you, I had a bad day and I—”

She bounded off the bed and rushed at him. She clutched at the lapels of his suit coat and spoke through clenched teeth as tears trickled down her cheeks. “No, no, you don't understand, you
have
to, Hugh, I need it, I'm serious, I
have
to
have
 it, right
now
.” As she spoke, she tore at his tie, ripped the buttons off his shirt, then pushed his coat over his shoulders and down his arms until it dropped to the floor. She jerked his tie from under his shirt collar and tossed it aside.

Hugh was alarmed. At first, judging by the savage look on her face, he'd thought she was attacking him in anger. Now she was stripping him. He decided to go along with her to keep her calm. But the truth was, he was worried about her. This was not typical behavior for her. Something was wrong. She seemed ...
manic
. But he went along as she unfastened his belt, then opened his pants. She dropped to one knee and took him into her mouth while he tried to kick off his shoes and remove his pants, and he nearly fell over. She stood again, grabbed his hips, and swung him around hard, throwing him onto the bed.

“Emily!” he said with irritation. He tried to peel off his socks, but was unable.

She was on him a second later. He'd gotten hard in her mouth, so she went straight to it. Emily mounted him and began writhing and bucking on him, growling. She was actually
growling
. He frowned up at her when he noticed a faint stain around her mouth, a red smear.

“Have you been eating berries?” he said.

“Shut up and
fuck me
!” she growled as she bent forward and dug her nails into his chest.

“Hey,
ouch
, dammit!” he said.

He looked down at her hands to see if she'd broken the skin and saw something that did not look right. Emily had painted her nails black. No, those were not her nails—they were coming directly out of her fingertips. They were
claws
—curved, sharp, black claws. And there was ...
hair
on the backs of her hands. She sat up again.

Hugh looked up at her and gasped. I fine layer of brown fur covered her body.

Emily cried out in pain as sounds began to come from her body, awful sounds that made Hugh forget what they were doing—the horrible crunch of cartilage, the snap of bones cracking as her face and body changed before him, skin undulating, humping up then smoothing out, stretching in places. Even though she kept crying out in pain—her voice got thicker and deeper—she continued to move frantically up and down on him as the lower half of her face jutted out. She kept moving on him even though his erection quickly dissolved—they were no longer having sex, but she did not seem to notice. Her mouth, now a snout, opened to reveal long, narrow fangs.

It was no longer Emily—it was something else, something horrible.

Hugh's eyes were opened to their limit and he released a series of staccato cries as he gawked up at her. He suddenly felt cold, and more frightened than he could ever remember being in his life.

She came forward again and placed large hairy clawed hands on his chest, hunching over him with much more size and muscle than she'd had just a moment ago, and those claws sliced into his skin and blood bubbled up around them.

Hugh screamed, a high, shrill, ululating sound. He screamed again and again, kicked his legs and flailed his arms, but the creature weighed him down, kept him on the bed. The thing Emily had become leaned forward and closed its mouth on Hugh's shoulder. The fangs broke the skin—he felt the
pop-pop-pop-pop
of each fang breaking through his flesh—tore through muscle tissue, and scraped against bone as his scream went on and on. It tore a chunk of flesh and muscle from his shoulder and sat up again. It made wet smacking sounds as its long snout chewed noisily on the blood-dripping meat.

His screams became increasingly ragged and hoarse as they formed words, “It's eating me!
It's eating meee
!” over and over again.

The thing finished eating the piece of him, and came down for more, still making humping motions against his shriveled penis.

Hugh's screams—”
It's eating me
!
It's eating meee
!”
—
garbled into silence as the thing closed its snout over his mouth and began to eat his face.

 

* * * *

 

Doris Whitacker dozed in her chair at the window, as she usually did after dinner. Tonight, she'd had a Healthy Choice frozen dinner—beef tips portobello, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and an apple crisp for dessert. It had been delicious and filling, and she'd dozed off while watching a rerun of
Everybody Loves Raymond
.

Something woke her with a start. Something like ... a scream? She blinked several times and looked at the television, thinking the sound had come from there. A cheerful tampon commercial was running. Doris frowned.

She heard the sound again. She muted the television with the remote and turned to her window.

It was a loud, high, hoarse scream, a
man's
scream. It came from across the street. Doris listened closely, leaning forward in her chair. It seemed to be coming from the Crane house. It sounded again and again and again—an ice-cold ululating wail filled with terror and pain. And ... it spoke. Doris gasped a little as she heard the screaming voice declare something—three words over and over—then it was cut off mid-scream and followed by a dreadful silence. She'd been unable to understand what the screaming voice had said, she knew only that it had spoken.

A chill settled deep in Doris's bones, making them ache.

Something was happening over there, something terrible.

Doris reached for the phone to call the police.

 

* * * *

 

Jason Sutherland sat at the narrow bar that was the only thing separating his tiny kitchen from his small living room. He drank from a bottle of Heineken as he watched an old horror movie on cable,
Mr. Sardonicus
. He stared at it, not really seeing it.

He thought, instead, about Andrea.

Jason had gone straight over there after work. He'd even left work a little early, unable to wait any longer, wanting so much to be with her. He'd gone to her door, rang the bell, and she'd opened it up smiling. She wore tight blue jeans and a red sweatshirt. She stepped back and let him in.

As soon as the front door was closed, they'd embraced and kissed.

“Come have a glass of wine with me,” she'd said as she led him to the couch. “We need to talk.” Two wineglasses stood on the coffee table by an open wine bottle.

Andrea poured, then sat next to him on the couch.

Frowning, Jason said, “I don't know if I like the sound of that.”

“Of what?”

“Of us needing to talk. Is that bad?”

“Well, Jason ... look.” She stared at her glass of wine as she spoke. “I'm married. I have children. I can't ... I mean, I shouldn't be ... it's just not right for me to ... “ She lifted her head and turned to him. “Do you know what I'm trying to say?”

“I think so.”

“We really shouldn't be ... you know.”

“Yeah. And?”

“And ... and ... “

They'd put down their drinks without tasting them and embraced, pressing their mouths together. They'd quickly undressed each other until naked, and they'd made hungry love there on the couch. Whatever pangs of conscience had been bothering Andrea were forgotten amid moans and thrusts and lusty kisses.

Jason smiled at the memory as he sat at the bar in his apartment.

He heard something outside. He muted the television, then listened, frowning. He dropped off the barstool and hurried to his bedroom in the front of the apartment. He went to the window on the left that looked out on Andrea's house. He heard the sound again, and realized it was coming from behind him. He hurried to the window across the room that looked out at the Cranes' house. It came from there.

Jason slid the window aside and touched his nose to the screen.

A man was screaming in the Crane house. Mr. Crane? He was screaming in agony—and then he spoke as he screamed.

“It's eating me! It's eating me!
It's eating meee
!
It's ea—”
It stopped abruptly.

A bone-deep chill went through him, starting in his scalp, which tingled with gooseflesh, then cascading down his entire body.

There were children over there. Jason thought a moment, trying to remember how many kids the Cranes had—was it two? No, three—they had the little one, and the two older kids.

“Oh, God,” he whispered when he thought of those kids being over there right now, whatever was going on. Somebody over there was in trouble.

Jason turned and jogged back through his apartment to the stairs. The stairwell was in the floor at the back. To help insulate the apartment, Jason had hung a large rug he'd found at a flea market over the opening. It was over six feet long and featured a giant picture of a leopard on a rock, surrounded by a colorful jungle. It was old and worn, but it suited his purpose. It was the perfect length and heaviness to cover that opening which otherwise would freeze him out in the winter.