Supernatural: Carved in Flesh (10 page)

His job—you really couldn’t call it a career—wasn’t the most fulfilling in the world, but it paid his bills, and the benefits, while not outstanding, were sufficient for his needs. He had his own house, a small one just outside the town limits, where it was nice and quiet. When naked monsters weren’t digging in his trash can, that was.

His health was good, and according to his doctor, if he kept going as he was, there was an excellent chance he’d live to a ripe old age. There was absolutely no reason on Earth why Lyle should be, as his mother used to put it, a Gloomy Gus. He supposed he’d simply been born that way.

Today, however, he had more than ample reason to be unhappy. It was bad enough that a trash-hungry bare-assed monster had paid him a visit the day before, but what really stuck in Lyle’s craw was how everyone had reacted to his story. The police had come out to take his statement, sure, but had they done any real investigating? Had they taken photographs, dusted for fingerprints, taken plaster molds of footprints, or swabbed for DNA? Had they done anything that the crime scene investigators on TV did? Hell, no. They hadn’t even bothered to search the woods behind his property. He’d had the feeling that it had taken every ounce of control the officers possessed to keep from laughing the entire time they were talking with him.

As bad as that had been, the story in the
Broadsider
that morning had been worse. Good thing he got the paper delivered or else he might not have seen the article before heading in to work. He’d called in sick because he hadn’t wanted to deal with his fellow employees making fun of him all day. Marcy, one of Swifty Print’s managers, had answered his call, and when he told her he wasn’t coming in, she asked if he was playing hooky so he could spend the day with his new friend. Before he could respond, she’d added.
Just be careful. You never know what a naked man will get up to. The stories I could tell you, honey! Just remember one thing...
And here she’d paused for effect.
Forewarned is four-armed!

He hung up on her peal of laughter.

Then those two magazine writers had come by. They’d seemed professional enough at first. They acted as if they were genuinely interested in hearing his story, and they listened closely as he went over the details. But when he showed them the mess in the back yard, they’d begun to seem doubtful. They hadn’t said as much, but he’d caught the looks they tossed back and forth. Looks that said,
We got ourselves a real piece of work here.
Like the police, they didn’t take any photos, and that was when he knew they weren’t going to include him in their article. Magazines
always
used pictures with the stories they ran. The fact that they hadn’t bothered to take any told him everything he needed to know about what they thought of his... well, he supposed you’d call it a sighting.

Maybe I shouldn’t have used the word cooties,
he thought.

So now here he was, working in his back yard to clean up the mess left by the whatever-the-hell-it-was. He wore rubber gloves and a surgical mask to protect himself from the worst of the germs. He wished he had a pair of coveralls, too, but he didn’t. Instead, he’d donned an old long-sleeved plaid shirt and a pair of jeans, both of which he’d bag up and throw away when he finished with the clean up. Even with the gloves, he didn’t want to touch the trash. Maybe monsters didn’t have cooties as such, but something had caused those weird deaths where people shriveled up like prunes, and he wasn’t about to take any chances. He didn’t own a tool designed for picking up litter, so he’d had to improvise. He’d taken a pair of salad tongs from his kitchen, and they did the job well enough. Of course, they’d have to be thrown away too when he was finished, but that was okay. Utensils were easily replaced. A man’s life, not so much.

Lyle was bent over and in the process of picking up a torn and empty package that had once contained fudge-covered vanilla-cream sandwich cookies—his only real vice—when he felt a tingling sensation on the back of his neck. He froze there, crouching, salad tongs gripping the cookie package in one gloved hand, a plastic garbage bag for the trash he’d gathered so far in the other. Someone—
something
—was watching him.

He didn’t consider himself an especially brave man, but he didn’t think of himself as a coward, either. He didn’t like scary books or movies, but not because they frightened him. He didn’t think they were realistic. Sure, bad things happened to people—sometimes
really
bad things, but awful as they were, they were understandable, even routine in some ways. Diseases, accidents, natural disasters, and most common of all, humans being shitty to one another. But to be scared of some horrible unknown thing lurking in the shadows? It had seemed ridiculous.

Now—frozen in mid-crouch in his back yard, the surgical mask covering the lower half of his face suddenly tight and stifling—he knew how the people in those stories felt. They weren’t simply frightened, they were
terrified,
breath caught in their throats, hearts pounding a trip-hammer beat, sweat erupting from their pores, stomachs filled with ice water. They felt small and weak, caught between two all-consuming but opposing impulses: to run away as fast and far as they possibly could, and also to stand statue-still and hope to remain unnoticed by the nameless thing that stalked them. Lyle now knew what they knew—what it was like to be prey. He’d never been so scared in his life.

He heard breathing first, heavy and labored, punctuated with a soft whistling-wheezing sound, as if the lungs producing it weren’t quite working right. The sound was off to his left, and he didn’t want to turn his head to look, he really didn’t. He’d rather squeeze his eyes shut and, like a child hiding under the covers in the dark, hope that if he couldn’t see the monster, it couldn’t see him. But he turned his head anyway, he couldn’t keep himself from doing so, and when he did, he saw exactly what he expected to.

The monster had returned.

Yesterday he’d watched the creature from within the safety of his home, peeking through the small white curtain that covered the back-door window. He’d been concealed from the thing’s view, protected by a solid wooden door locked with a deadbolt. It had been a strange sight, that was for damn sure, but he hadn’t felt threatened. The situation had been so bizarre that it hadn’t seemed real. He’d felt like a detached observer, watching the creature on a TV screen. It had seemed absurd with its two heads and four arms, like something out of a child’s cartoon. But now, with the creature standing less than a dozen yards away and nothing between them but air, it didn’t seem so absurd. In fact, it was downright terrifying.

It stood six feet tall, and its naked body—aside from the extra parts—was that of a normal man. Although it carried a few extra pounds around the middle, it was in relatively good shape, with hard muscle and a light covering of black body hair. Each head had to lean to the side—one right, one left—in order for them to fit on a single body, and Lyle found himself thinking that both of the poor sons of bitches probably suffered from perpetually sore necks. The head on the right had straight black hair that hung in long greasy clumps, and an unkempt beard that was badly in need of trimming. The head on the left had a lighter complexion, and its thick hair was a soft ginger color. It was clean-shaven, with a dusting of freckles on the cheeks. Both heads held similar expressions: eyes wide and wild, mouths slack and open. A thin line of drool ran from the corner of Ginger’s mouth and dribbled onto its chest.

It stood hunched forward, no doubt because of the added weight of those extra arms and head. The second set of arms protruded from the front of the creature’s shoulders, and were thinner than the other pair, the skin lighter, body hair almost nonexistent.

They’re Ginger’s arms,
Lyle thought, and his stomach gave a flip at this realization.

Right then, all four of its arms were hanging loosely, as if it had forgotten for the moment that they were there.

Lyle noticed another detail, one he’d missed before. At the junctures where Ginger’s body parts connected with Black Hair’s were patches of skin that didn’t look right. The color and texture were strange, artificial somehow, and it reminded Lyle of the Silly Putty he’d played with as a child. Of all the wrong things there were about this creature, that not-skin was somehow the worst, and looking at it made Lyle feel sick to his stomach. Well, sicker.

For a long moment the monster stared at him with its two pairs of eyes, as if it was as surprised to see Lyle as Lyle was to see it.
Maybe he’s wondering what happened to
my
extra head and arms,
Lyle thought. The idea struck him as so ridiculous that he couldn’t help letting out a short laugh, although it sounded more like a sob. The creature started at the sound, and for an instant Lyle thought it might bolt like a frightened deer and run back to the woods. But instead its two mouths stretched into hideous lopsided grins.

“Hun!” Black-Hair said.

“Gee!” Ginger said.

There was a short pause between the sounds, but when the heads spoke a second time they did so in rapid succession, so the syllables came out as a single almost-word.

“Hun-gee!”

Ice collected on Lyle’s spine, and his bowels turned watery. The creature spoke in the simplistic manner of a toddler, but this time Lyle had no trouble understanding what it—they—were saying.

Hungry.

Lyle dropped the garbage bag and tongs, and ran like hell for his house. The creature let out two excited hoots, like those a large ape might make, and gave pursuit.

Lyle heard its pounding footfalls and whistle-wheeze breath, and adrenaline surged through his system, spurring him to run faster. He once again felt a tingle on the back of his neck, only now the sensation seemed to be warning him that the two-headed monstrosity was reaching for him, its fingers—nails overlong, cracked, and split—mere inches from his flesh. The feeling was so strong that he couldn’t stop himself from looking back over his shoulder, and as soon as he did, he wished he’d resisted the impulse. The creature wasn’t as close as he’d feared, about fifteen feet behind him—which was good—but the
way
it ran... It moved with a spastic, lopsided gait, as if its nervous system had short-circuited and was firing off impulses at random. Instead of reaching out to grab him as he’d pictured, all four of the creature’s arms hung limply, the extremities flailing and flopping as their owner continued to lurch after Lyle. It was without doubt the most horrible thing Lyle had ever seen. So why did it strike him as almost funny?

A giggle escaped his mouth, one tinged with more than a hint of hysteria.

As if the giggle was a cue, the creature bellowed its tag-team word again.

“Hun-gee!”

Lyle’s giggle became a shriek, and he faced forward and ran even faster.

He’d left the back door unlocked, and even though his hands were sweating something fierce, the rubber gloves kept his grip from being slick, so he was able to turn the knob without difficulty. People at work teased him about being OCD, but he wished they could see him right then.

Who’s crazy now?

He threw open the door, lunged inside, and slammed it shut behind him, whirled around, threw the deadbolt, engaged the smaller lock on the knob, and backed quickly away. He moved too fast, stumbled over his own feet, and fell backward, landing hard on his ass. The impact jolted his spine and caused his teeth to clack together painfully. In the process he bit into the tip of his tongue, and blood started to fill his mouth. He tried to spit, remembered the surgical mask, tore it off his face and dropped it on the kitchen floor. He then turned his head and expelled a glob of blood. It splattered onto a lower cabinet door, but he didn’t notice, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have cared. He had more important things to worry about right now than a little mess. OCD be damned.

He fixed his gaze on the door and waited.

It won’t get in,
Lyle told himself.
The lock’s strong. I know, because I installed it myself.
Besides, the way those arms were flapping around, they might not function properly. If that was so, even if the door had been unlocked, the creature might not be able to turn the knob. So no matter what, he was safe. He
was.

The door burst inward without any warning, glass shattering, hinges tearing free, the deadbolt ripping through the jamb. The door slid across the floor and bumped to a stop against Lyle’s feet.

The two-headed man stood in the now-open doorway, all four arms held out ramrod straight, palms up.

Guess those arms work after all,
he thought.

The creature lurched into the kitchen, double grins widening into twin leers.

“Hun-gee!”

Lyle heard someone laughing, and it took him a moment to realize that the sound bubbled up from his own throat. The whole thing was just too damned messed-up to take seriously.

The creature reached Lyle, knelt awkwardly before him, and placed all fours hand on the sides of the man’s face. Lyle’s laughter broke off in a gasp. The monster’s flesh was cold—so cold it burned.

Then a great heaviness settled on Lyle, and with it came a weariness more powerful than any he’d ever known. He struggled to keep his eyes open, but really, what was the point? His limbs felt as if they’d turned to lead, and although he tried to pull away from the monster’s quadruple grip, he was weak as a newborn. He couldn’t move, let alone fight. It would be simpler to just give in, let his eyes close, and allow himself to slip away.

So that’s what he did.

Just before the endless darkness took hold of Lyle and swept him away forever, he heard a pair of voices speak a single word.

“Good...”

* * *

“Is it dead?” Dean asked.

“How should I know?” Sam said.

“Check it.”

“You
check it!”

Dean had pumped every round his shotgun held into that damned dog, and Sam had emptied his Beretta’s clip, reloaded, and continued firing. Frankenmutt was down, finally, but neither of the brothers was sure it was permanent. During his years as a hunter Dean had encountered a lot of supernatural entities that were hard to kill, but he’d rarely run into anything as tough as this patchwork pooch. Frankenmutt lay on its side, its flesh a savaged, bloody ruin from all the damage it had taken. Dean almost felt sorry for the thing. Almost.