Hard white light hit the glass and came through silver, bathing me. A spasm flared through my body from my ankles, up my spine, to the back of my neck. My head shot back, and the veins in my throat became engorged, thick blue, with burning blood. I hit the floor hard just as the milky, white froth began to bubble up from my insides. I forced myself to crawl over to the tarp.
Tears leaked from my eyes from the pain, and snot ran down my face in a rivulet. In a moment’s time, my body would no longer belong to me at all. It would be the vessel of a ghastlier, more terrible entity.
Lying on my side on the plastic sheet, I saw the nails fall off my fingertips, replaced by thick, cedar-colored talons. Black hair oozed out from every pore. New muscles bulged and flexed under tearing skin, and where I ripped, smoke billowed and blood spurted out like children spitting up food.
I thought of the Rose Killer. Through the pain, I smiled.
It was the last act of the evening I would be able to will my body to make, because from that point on, my mind was on the back burner. Marlowe Higgins was going someplace farther than sleep, a place that was too deep for even the sandman to tread lightly. As I fell away, I heard my scream turn into a howl, and then I was gone.
ELEVEN
I woke up on the bedroom floor the next morning, right in the same spot where I had blacked out the night before. A lot of the blood on the tarp had dried black, and it was as sticky as sin. It felt like there were a million grains of sand mixed into the slush that had been my body, but it wasn’t sand. It was pulverized bone. I stretched and spit the thick muck that lined the walls of my mouth out onto the tarp.
It was a workday, and the alarm clock was going off. “Magic Carpet Ride” blared from KBTO. I could hear birds chirping outside, just like everything was hunky-dory according to them.
I would always set the clock a little earlier than usual the morning after—that way I’d have the chance to do some tidying up before heading in. I hated leaving the place looking like an abattoir while I was off whipping up Louisiana Burgers for the general public.
I was naked, of course, and covered in a thick layer of dried blood. As I wiped the sleep from my eyes and began to rise, the dried blood flaked off of me like flower petals and fell to the hardwood floor. All about me were hairs, sinews, and short lengths of muscle—some of them mine, some of them not mine. A row of teeth rested by my foot, attached to a brittle piece of jawbone. A handful of fragments of my victim’s skin rested in a constellation all about the floor, and drips of blood dotted themselves all along the floors of my house.
I’d pull the piss-colored rug back later, once I cleaned.
I limped to the living room—still not comfortable in my own skin—and lit myself a smoke. My lungs felt new and clean. Everything was as I’d left it. All in all, I felt fine, maybe even a little happy. I felt like I’d done someone a really big favor when I didn’t have to. Like I was a Good Samaritan. That kind of feeling.
After a brief inspection of the house to make sure I still had all my windows and there wasn’t anything horrible out in front—some eviscerated remnant of a human being, a stack of dead bodies, claw marks along the outside of the house—I made a pot of coffee. As that was going, I took the all-important shower.
It never ceased to amaze me how much effort it took to get all the blood out from around my fingernails. It was always a pain in the ass. That, and my hair. On skin, I’d often resort to using steel wool on myself, like I did that day. It hurt, but it worked, and any cuts I received would be gone by the end of the day. On hair, like the hair on my chest and around my happy place, I used one of those back-scrubber brushes. It worked well enough, but there were always little bits of blood I’d have to pick off hairs with my fingertips.
I shampooed twice, then conditioned twice. As the second bout of conditioner went to work, I got out of the shower and went over to the cabinet above the sink. I pulled out my razor, my comb, and some shaving cream, then went back in the shower. I shaved in there with the use of a small mirror fixed into the wall, and combed the dried blood flakes out that had eluded the washings. The water going down the drain was pink.
That was twenty minutes of my life right there, but I was once again the most handsome sonofabitch who’d ever lived, mustache and all.
Before I dressed, I turned the radio up, hoping to hear some good news. I listened as I went around with my bucket of soapy water, cleaning up the bloody floors with a few rags. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have a go at the doorknobs too, so I started cleaning those. A special report came over about another body found up by the Crowley property, but details were nonexistent. I smiled. I even laughed. It was just like those crazy motherfuckers, going back to the scene of the crime.
“Probably to get himself off,” I said out loud. “Good riddance.”
In the bedroom, I rolled up the stinking tarp and put it in a black Hefty bag. After I scrubbed the floor, I pulled the rug into place and got dressed in my blue jeans and an old Motorhead shirt. I put my belt on, my boots, got the keys to the truck, and headed out. The day was proving to be very sunny. It matched my mood.
I turned the key in the truck, and the engine coughed.
“C’mon, you fucking worm! Fucking work!”
God came down, and the truck came back to life.
“Thank you, Jesus.”
I went to work. In four weeks, there’d be another full moon, and another chance to make someone pay. Before that, I’d have to pick another target and do the same thing all over again.
The radio in the truck didn’t work. Nor did the air-conditioning, but that’s why I had been able to afford the thing. I wasn’t worried, though. I’d get the full report from Pearce by the end of the week.
Actually, I’m lying. I was worried just a little bit about killing someone within the confines of Evelyn two months in a row. That was something I never wanted to do, for hysteria’s sake, and that’s why I got the newspapers from so many neighboring places—so I could spread the love around. This time, it was unavoidable. The Rose Killer had forced me to make an executive decision, and I didn’t regret it. The killer was an abomination who had to be stopped.
I drove through town and stopped at my newsstands just like I always did.
A few minutes later, I pulled up outside the restaurant and saw I was the first one there that day. I thought it was strange and kind of off-putting that I had somehow become the responsible one at that place. I was still late, but not as late as Abraham, and he liked his job.
I unlocked the door and turned the lights on. I put my stack of newspapers on the stool in the kitchen and fired up the grill. By the time I started taking the chairs down off the tables, Abraham showed up.
I was happy to be the first one that day. The day after—and it has never stopped, this feeling—I always struggle to act as normal as possible, because I’m a fucking paranoid. I missed having my motorcycle. The urge to take off was sometimes overwhelming. I missed the road. The wind. I’ve always had this useless worry that someone would come after me, as if the beast and I had some kind of passing resemblance. As if someone would be fortunate enough to live after seeing the goddamn thing and say “Hey, that animal that just tore apart old man Burns looks a hell of a lot like that guy from the restaurant!”
In my calmer moments I believe this will never happen, but when you grow up on G-man movies, you can’t help but think you come off like a suspect no matter what.
“Hey, brother,” I said.
“You’re one cold motherfucker, starting in with the ‘brother’ shit on a morning like this.”
“What the fuck do you mean?” I asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.
“You don’t know?”
“What?” I said, giving a great performance of being genuinely pissed.
“I don’t know how to say this, but don’t you have a television? Contact with the outside world at all?”
“I get smoke signals, but they’ve been on the fritz lat
ely.” Abe took off his cap and stared at the floor. “Your man Pearce bought it, man.”
My heart sunk somewhere below my bowels, and the taste of a dinner I couldn’t remember having came up into my mouth. My legs turned to spaghetti.
The word “What?” came up out of my mouth.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you. He got attacked last night, this morning. Some kind of animal or something like that, like that shit you dudes was talking about a while back. It’s all over the fucking news, man.”
I sank onto a stool at the counter.
I couldn’t think of anything to say. Me, Marlowe Higgins, the man of a thousand four-letter words, was speechless. And I couldn’t think of anything to feel. Nothing felt appropriate. Nothing felt true. I rested my head in my hands. I couldn’t do anything else.
Abraham came over and put a hand on my shoulder the way men do. I let out a groan from somewhere deep. An old place I didn’t like to visit.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I can’t fucking believe it,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You want a moment?”
“God, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think … I think I gotta get outta here.”
“You want I should call Carlos to take over for you?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I think you’re gonna have to.”
“Done,” he said, and he went and got on the horn.
As he was talking on the phone, I oozed off the stool and headed toward the door. Crossing the black-and-white tiles made me dizzy. It was as if my sense of equilibrium had been destroyed, and everything appeared as if through a kaleidoscope.
I reached for the doorknob like a lifeline and made it out into the warm air. The bell jangled, and then I was outside in the blaring sun. I felt blinded, on display, ashamed. It was a feeling I hadn’t known so closely in many years.
I got to the truck, took out my keys, and then stopped myself. I went back to the restaurant, got my papers from the stool in the kitchen, and slithered back out, not saying a word to Abraham. He didn’t say anything to me either.
I started the truck up and backed out of the space slowly, not being quite too sure of my movements, and how true they would be. My hands were shaking.
I started driving toward the center of town, toward the buildings and the radios and the police and the people, but I couldn’t do it. I made a left and went down to Old Sherman Road, driving slowly.
I took Old Sherman west, and then it curved around and started going north. After a few minutes of driving, I passed my block and just kept going. I made the full loop around town, just like Bill Parker used to do before he was killed. It was then that I realized that some part of that man that I had killed had become a part of me, because here I was doing my worrying on that long and winding road.
I pulled over on the shoulder.
As if everything prior had been shock, I realized, as in it truly hit me, that Pearce had been wiped out, butchered, ripped apart, maimed unrecognizable, and that it had been me that had done it to him. I felt the parts of his body that were still in my stomach react to the coffee I’d drunk, and it twisted me up inside.
“Martha,” I said out loud without thinking to.
I squeezed my eyes shut and bit my hand.
“Martha, are you okay?”
I was being invaded by a memory of his.
I saw it all through his eyes. Rushing into the living room from the office, and there she was on the couch, holding her belly. She had that one wrinkle on her forehead—a deep crease that only existed when she was hurting. The sunlight was pouring in through the windows.
“She kicked,” Martha said.
I sat next to her and placed my hand on her belly. I felt my baby’s power as it shifted an arm or a leg, as it kicked out. My baby’s getting ready to hatch, Pearce thought. I rested my head on her stomach. I heard my wife’s heart, and I think, somewhere down deep, I heard my baby’s.
In the truck, I screamed out loud.
Tears spilled down my face. I couldn’t hold them back. Everything I had built for myself, this whole cardboard life that—even though I didn’t know it until that moment—meant everything to me, had been pulverized with one man’s death. I didn’t know how it had happened, but there wasn’t a solution, no magic words to turn back the cruel hands of time. The wolf had betrayed me. I had killed an innocent man. I had killed my one friend.
TWELVE
On the way home I passed a liquor store. I hadn’t been in the place in years, but before I had the house it was like a home for me, just like the bars were. I was messed up. All I could think about was having a drink or two or twenty to dull the pain I felt inside. The stuff was poison, but God had never made a more effective salve for people like me.
I stopped the truck outside the liquor store, knowing damn well what Pearce would say about this if he were still alive.
I didn’t go in.
I came home and locked the door behind me. Checked all the windows. The sun was pouring in through all my curtains, it was that powerful. It was like God was shining the floodlights on me, saying, “There he is.”
I turned on my little black-and-white television, and all that came through was a garbled wall of static, alien shapes moving through the rough snow. I twirled the rabbit ears around in a circle and finally found a position for them in which I was at least able to receive the audio clearly.
I guess there was a news conference in progress. I didn’t know if it was the one Pearce had mentioned—the one the feds had been orchestrating in some kind of attempt to set a trap for the Rose Killer.
It wasn’t.
I saw a wall of reporters outside of the police station on the other side of town. On the bottom of the screen was a scrolling message: OFFICER KILLED.
“This is Linda Roth reporting from outside the Evelyn Police Department,” the lady with the microphone said. “Details about the death of Detective Daniel Pearce are scarce, but to reiterate what we already know, we take you back to the studio.” A man appeared in a newsroom.
“Detective Daniel Casey Pearce,” the man said, “was one of Evelyn’s finest. Born in 1964 to Carol and Herbert Pearce, he attended school here in Evelyn, graduating as valedictorian from Stephen Bailey High School in 1982. Upon receiving his diploma, he entered the United States Air Force. He came back home to Evelyn in 1985.”
I reached for my side. It felt like it was on fire.
“He immediately joined the Evelyn Police Department, and through years of hard work and a strong work ethic, quickly became one of the force’s most decorated officers,” the man continued. “In the fall of 1991, he earned his gold shield after his involvement in what has become known as the Starling Street Hostage Crisis.”
Two men had gone into the jewelry store to rob it. Someone tripped the silent alarm, and it quickly became a hostage situation. Pearce was the responding officer. He put both men down before his backup arrived. Not a single hostage was injured in the short gun battle.
“Daniel Pearce is survived by a sister, his wife, and his unborn baby girl. He was twenty-nine years old.”
These were the bare facts about the man who saved me. The man I killed. I felt like the careful balance between life and hell that I had worked so hard to keep up over the last few years had crumbled just like that and just so quickly that I didn’t even know where the pieces went. I didn’t know what to think.
They cut back to the intrepid news lady on the street.
“At sunrise this morning, Daniel Pearce’s body was discovered on what is known as the Crowley property here in Evelyn, about a mile north of Old Sherman Road. As we have reported, this is the same site where, just a short time ago, the body of Gloria Shaw was found murdered at the hands of the serial murderer known only as the Rose Killer. Detective Pearce, in a joint effort with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was conducting surveillance at the scene of this brutal crime. Now it seems that tragedy has struck twice here in
Evelyn, and we can only hope that these two deaths are unrelated. We take you now to the PD conference room. Bill?”
They cut to a crowded room in the precinct.
“Bill Hagmeier here, where Captain Louis Thorpe is about to read a brief statement, and answer a few questions about this tragedy.”
A man with a shock of white hair climbed the steps to the podium at the far side of the room. He was decked out in his dress uniform with about twenty-five pounds of medals pinned to his chest.
“Ladies and gentlemen of Evelyn,” he said in a deep voice, reading from a sheet, “and members of the press, at approximately five-forty-five this morning, the body of Detective Daniel Casey Pearce was discovered on the property of the Frederick Crowley family on the north side of Evelyn.”
“Who found him?” someone shouted.
“A resident on the property, and that is as specific as I am going to get at this time. The authorities were notified forthwith and …”
“How was he identified?” someone else shouted. Someone else yelled, “Is it true that the body was dismembered?”
More shouts rose.
The captain silenced them all with a sharp bang on his pedestal, a closed fist raining down on the board the microphones were attached to.
“He was identified by his shield. The investigation is in its earliest phase, and … Detective Pearce was … he …” and then he broke down, right up there in front of the world. The press jumped on him like vultures.
“Was it true his body was found beheaded?” they asked. “Is it true that it was a bear? Is it true that shots were fired? Was it a suicide-by-shotgun? Was he involved in any illegal activities that the department is aware of? Was this a crime of revenge? Is there any connection to the Rose Killer?”
The captain responded to the questions with yes or no answers, and finally got fed up enough that he walked off the stage. The sounds of the camera flashes were almost as loud as the shouts.
The Wolfman Page 11
