Dweller

by Jeff Strand

  Owen lashed out, his claw smacking the side of Melissa’s head. She cried out and fell down into the snow.

  “No! Owen, stop it!” Toby reached into his jacket pocket, fumbling around for the gun. “Just stop!”

  Owen growled, the loudest, most ferocious growl Toby had ever heard from him.

  “Get him away from me!” Melissa screamed.

  Toby pulled out the gun and pointed it at Owen, who squealed in fright and covered his face with his hands.

  “Get out of here,” Toby told Melissa. “Just go!”

  Melissa got up and ran.

  Owen moved his hands away from his face. Blood trickled down his cheek. He howled in misery, and then lunged forward and slashed Toby across the chest, his talons ripping through Toby’s jacket, exposing the cotton insulation.

  Toby pulled the trigger.

  Blood sprayed from Owen’s arm. The monster howled again and dropped to his knees.

  “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!” What had he done? How could he shoot his best friend? What kind of horrible, heartless person was he?

  Owen looked enraged. Animalistic.

  Toby ran after Melissa, calling her name. He’d been so stupid. This could never have worked. What sort of lunatic brought his girlfriend out into the forest to meet a goddamn monster with jaws?

  Movement behind him. Coming fast.

  The impact knocked him to the ground, landing facefirst in the snow. Owen’s claws dug into his back. He cried out, barely feeling the pain but knowing that all ten talons pierced his skin. He deserved it, but didn’t want to die.

  Owen withdrew his talons, then raced ahead.

  “No! Owen! Don’t hurt her!”

  Toby got up. His arms were numb and the gun dropped into the snow. Owen pounced on Melissa. She screamed as he let out a roar, opening his jaws wide. He thrust his head down at her.

  Toby stumbled toward them.

  Melissa put up her arm to defend herself, and Owen’s teeth sunk into her arm. He tore away, ripping off vinyl, cotton, and flesh. Blood rained onto the snow.

  “Owen, please!”

  Owen looked back at him.

  “Don’t kill her. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have brought her out here. But if you hurt her I’ll never come back and you’ll be alone forever.” They didn’t have a signal for I’ll never come back but he prayed that Owen understood him.

  Melissa kept screaming. Toby knew that they were deep enough in the woods to be out of earshot, but he still worried that everybody in town could hear her.

  Owen hesitated.

  Then he tore another chunk out of her arm.

  Toby spun back around. He needed the gun. He had to shoot Owen before he killed Melissa. Toby was feeling sick and dizzy but he needed to end this, and Owen was no longer listening to him. He couldn’t let Melissa die.

  He picked up the gun and fired. The shot went wild, knocking some snow off a tree branch. Owen looked back at the source of the noise, and Melissa wriggled free and ran off, cradling her mangled arm.

  Toby aimed the gun more carefully, but his fingers wouldn’t work.

  Owen didn’t seem scared by the gun anymore.

  Toby switched to his other hand. Fired another shot that didn’t even come close. If he kept this up he’d shoot Melissa by accident.

  Owen looked back and forth between Toby and Melissa, as if trying to decide which one to attack. Good. If he came after Toby, he could get a better shot. “Here!” Toby said, gesturing toward himself. “Come get me!”

  The monster rushed at him.

  Toby squeezed off two more shots in rapid succession. Neither one hit. He didn’t think he was trying to miss on purpose, but maybe subconsciously he—

  Owen leaped at him.

  They both slammed onto the ground.

  Toby hit him in the face with the gun. If he couldn’t shoot straight, he could at least use it as a bludgeoning weapon. Owen yipped like a hurt puppy. Toby struck him again, and the gun dropped out of his grasp once more.

  “I hope she blinded you!” Toby screamed. He threw a punch at Owen’s face, thumb extended, trying to gouge out his uninjured eye—

  —and then his hand was pinched between Owen’s jaws.

  Toby stopped moving. Owen could bite off his hand with almost no effort, pop that thing right off and gulp it down.

  They locked eyes. Owen’s eye had a small cut in the iris, and he kept blinking.

  “Owen, please don’t,” Toby said, forcing himself to remain calm and soothing. “Don’t hurt me. You don’t hurt your friends.”

  Within Owen’s mouth, Toby felt a warm tongue slide over his palm.

  He desperately hoped that Melissa was running fast, putting plenty of distance between them, getting the hell out of this deadly forest.

  Toby’s hand remained attached, so Owen hadn’t gone completely feral. He could still be reasoned with. They were still friends.

  “Let me go,” said Toby, softly.

  Owen continued to lick his palm. A sign of affection…or gauging the taste?

  Then he opened his jaws, just enough for Toby to pull his hand free. Toby did so and then flexed his fingers, as if testing to make sure they were really still there and not inside Owen’s stomach.

  Owen gave him a look that Toby couldn’t decipher, then sprung to his feet and raced in the direction that Melissa had gone. Toby got up and went after them.

  Melissa hadn’t gotten far. The trail of red snow ended just around the corner, and she leaned against a tree, bracing herself as she tried to catch her breath. God, she’d lost so much blood.

  “Toby, please, call him off!” she wailed. “You said—!”

  Owen got her.

  He bit into her shoulder, ripping off and devouring a chunk of flesh that went down to the bone. The next bite ended her screams.

  Toby stood in place, watching. Now he just felt numb.

  He should have tried to scare Owen away from Melissa’s corpse, but the idea of the monster defiling her body didn’t matter to him, now that his girlfriend was dead. It wasn’t Melissa anymore. It was food.

  He just watched Owen eat.

  Owen watched Toby as well, as if daring him to come closer.

  “Why did you do it?” Toby finally asked, but not loud enough to be heard over the chewing sounds. “She didn’t hurt you that bad. It wasn’t on purpose.”

  Owen’s meal went on, uninterrupted.

  Toby wiped away tears and collapsed against the same tree he’d used to brace the shotgun all those years ago. “You shouldn’t have done it. I wish you hadn’t done it.”

  He snapped back to reality, as if awakening from a trance. There was blood everywhere, staining the snow and the trees and the rocks. Melissa lay in a gory, half-skeletal mess. Owen remained hovered over her, his teeth stripping her right leg.

  “Get away from her,” he whispered.

  Owen didn’t acknowledge him.

  “Geta way from her!” he shouted. He looked around and saw the gun lying on the ground. He picked it up and pointed it into the sky, firing off four or five shots before the clip was empty.

  Owen ran, not looking back as he charged off into the depths of the forest.

  Toby walked over to what remained of Melissa. He stared at her with an almost detached curiosity.

  And then he let it all out, screaming in primal anguish, punching and kicking the trees, cursing the heavens, vowing to hunt down and kill the murderous beast, and sobbing over his loss.

  This morning, he’d had two friends. Now he had none.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Burn the whole forest down,” Larry suggested. “Just pour gasoline over every square inch, light a match, and watch this place go inferno.”

  “I might,” said Toby.

  “Yeah! We’ll dance in the flames! It’ll be the party of the century! Burn, burn, burn!”

  “You want to know the best part?” asked Nick. “Watching Owen run through the woods with his hair on fire. Total body
burn. I’ll cheer for that. Hopefully I’ll even have a bucket of water in my hand that I can refuse to throw on him.”

  “It wasn’t Owen’s fault.”

  “Oh, of course not, his claws aren’t bloodstained at all. Somebody else grabbed his jaws and opened and closed them on Melissa’s arm. Owen’s just a big furry puppet.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know crap about what you mean, Toby. I just know that you should destroy that thing. Get a machine gun and pump six thousand bullets into its chest. Flay the skin right off its bones. Better yet, get the army involved, have them drop a whole atomic bomb right smack-dab on his cave. Turn Owen into a pile of glowing white ashes.”

  “Not painful enough,” said Nick.

  “I don’t even care about making him suffer. I just want to see something spectacular. Flames or an atomic blast. Wipe him off the map.”

  “He’s my best friend.”

  “Are you still clinging to that? Toby, I know you don’t think of me as a father figure, but I’m going to share a piece of wisdom with you: When somebody tears your girlfriend apart and scatters her guts all over the ground, he ceases to be your best friend. He ceases to even be a pleasant acquaintance. It’s pretty much mortal-enemies territory.”

  “But he’s the only thing I’ve got.”

  “Well, yeah, now. Because of him. You don’t have to open the valentine with the time bomb just because it’s the only one in your mailbox. If you’re that needy, move to California and live by your mommy and daddy again.”

  “I don’t need your advice.”

  “You know what’s sad? We’re dead, and Melissa’s dead, but you’re talking to us instead of her. That’s pretty fucked up. Where is she?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t find her.”

  “Priorities, man. She was ugly, but she was a lot better looking than this guy.” Larry pointed at Nick. “And she was a great lay. Even without a basis for comparison you know she was a great lay.”

  Nick nodded. “That toy thing was sensational.”

  “Both of you, just shut up and go away.”

  “No, I want to see how you deal with this mess. It’s snowing, so that’s a point in your favor. Cover the tracks. Cover the blood. What are you going to do with the body?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Won’t be easy to bury her in frozen ground. You’d need some heavy machinery. You may have to take her home with you.”

  “I’m not doing that.”

  “Yeah, I suppose keeping a mangled, rotting corpse at your place is a bit morbid. And the cops might find that kind of discovery fairly interesting if they search your house. So you can’t bury her and you can’t take her home. I think you’re pretty much left with dragging her off the main path and building a nice little makeshift aboveground grave.”

  Toby whispered infinite apologies to Melissa as he carried her through the woods. She was so light. Half of her face remained, though her eyes were gone, and there was no expression. No scream, no grin, nothing to show what she’d once been.

  He gently placed her on a pile of snow. She sunk down into it a bit, not enough to hide his crime, but enough to bring fresh tears at the sight of her moving away from him.

  He pushed snow over her, burying her.

  There should be some kind of marker. A cross or something to memorialize her.

  “Don’t even think about it,” said Larry.

  Of course, he was right. There was no place here for honoring his dead girlfriend. This was about covering up a horrible crime. Nothing else mattered.

  He couldn’t leave her out here forever, but the forest was huge. Nobody would find her before the snow melted. Not even Owen.

  He was freezing to death. Could be hypothermia. He needed to go back home, take a long, hot bath, and try to get his mind working again so that he didn’t miss any important pieces that might send him to jail.

  I didn’t kill her.

  But he had. He’d put her in this situation, promised her that everything would be fine.

  Leave guilt out of it. From a purely practical standpoint, even if they blame her death on a wild animal, having her body discovered means that the police might link her death to the deaths of Larry and Nick. Those you did do. Don’t let yourself get caught. Don’t go to prison. You’re only twenty-nine, you still have plenty of living to do.

  Or he could put a bullet in his skull and make things better for everyone.

  “Don’t do it,” Larry said. “Even I don’t think that’s the way to go, and I hate your fucking guts.”

  There’d be no suicide. Toby wasn’t going to be found dead in his living room with his brains decorating the wall like abstract art. He did dumb things all the time, but he wasn’t a complete moron, and he’d figure out a way to get through this.

  Toby eased himself into the hot water. It felt wonderful on his frozen extremities, but it ignited the claw marks on his back.

  The antiseptic hurt even worse.

  “That bitch,” he said.

  Mr. Zack glared at him. “Stop it. That’s completely inappropriate.”

  “I know, I’m sorry, I just didn’t think she’d actually do it.”

  “What exactly did she say?”

  “She said she’d met this guy, she refused to tell me his name, and she said she was in love. I thought she was just pissed at me for some reason.”

  “Did you have a fight?”

  “Not a serious one. Things weren’t going as well as they used to, but I really thought she’d be here at the store when I came in this morning.”

  “Thank you for speaking with us, Mr. Floren.”

  “No problem.”

  “The last person to talk to Ms. Tomlinson, besides you, of course, was her mother, two nights ago. I don’t mind telling you that she shared a somewhat different view of your relationship with her daughter.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The cop, Detective Dormin, smiled, though it was only with the corners of his mouth. He looked about forty and Toby had disliked him immediately.

  “Apparently Melissa told her that things were going extremely well. She was in love with you. Thought you might even be The One.”

  Toby chuckled without humor. “Just like a woman, huh? One day she’s madly in love, the next day she’s running off with some stranger.”

  “Interesting that she didn’t tell her mom about this.”

  “Do you think something else happened to her?”

  “No, we’re not ready to call it foul play quite yet. A girl that age doesn’t have her head screwed on completely straight. I did find it interesting to go back through some files and see your name attached to another disappearance. Two disappearances, actually. You know who I’m talking about, right?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Apparently they ran away, too. Were never heard from again. You didn’t get along with them very well, did you?”

  “You’re right. Fifteen years ago I was questioned about two missing kids. Dear Lord, it’s a killing spree!”

  “Hey, watch the lip. If you think this is a joking matter you’re going to be very disappointed when I slap some cuffs on you. It was more like fourteen years, and there’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

  “If you’re accusing me of murder, I’d like a lawyer.”

  “I’m not accusing you of anything yet. When I do, I’ll have all my ducks in a row. I hope you do as well. Tell me, Toby, if I may be so informal as to call you Toby, did you hear any gunshots last night?”

  “Yeah. A bunch of them. I hear gunshots all the time. That’s what happens when you live in a rural area.”

  “Again with the lip.”

  “Am I free to go?”

  “You are, but I’d recommend that you stick around and answer as many questions as I’ve got for you. And I’ve got a lot of them. You’re what we like to call a ‘person of interest,’ and I’ve got something of an obsessive personality. You don’t want
to be my pet project.”

  “Fine. What do you want to know?”

  “Start from the beginning again. Be detailed.”

  It’s a huge, vast forest. They’ll never find her.

  Toby’s story held up to close scrutiny. It had to. Nobody would know he was out in the woods with Melissa. He couldn’t imagine that she would have told anybody about Owen beforehand. If she had, and somebody came forth, he’d worry about it then, but for now he was just going to assume that his secret was safe.

  He wondered how Owen was doing.

  How much blood had he lost? Was he okay? How did a wild animal tend to a bullet wound?

  Was Owen as lonely as he was?

  Was Owen even still alive?

  He wanted to go out into the forest to see him, just a quick glimpse, just to satisfy his curiosity, but, of course, he couldn’t. He couldn’t go back into the woods until he knew for certain that the police were no longer watching.

  Anyway, he hated Owen now, right?

  “Hello, Mr. Floren, so sorry to drop in on you unexpectedly like this.” Detective Dormin handed Toby a piece of paper. “This is a handy little search warrant. Judge Baird’s number is on the top if you’d like to give him a call. I’ll wait.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Great, I’m glad that you won’t be giving us any problems. You’ve got some puffy eyes, Toby. Doing a lot of crying, have you? Guilt or sorrow? Maybe a little of both?”

  “I lost somebody very close to me. I don’t need you giving me crap about it.”

  “You’re right. That was unkind of me. Nice place you’ve got here. I recommend that you find yourself a good book to read and a comfortable spot, because we’re planning to be here for a while.”

  Toby threw up into the toilet. He couldn’t keep any food down anymore.

  Melissa. He missed her so much.

  “Had yourself a nice little barbecue, did you?” Detective Dormin asked. “Seems kind of cold for that sort of thing, but I’m not one to judge. Fresh ashes in there. The lab boys, they said they don’t really look like charcoal. They say, and you’re going to think this is the strangest thing, that it’s fabric. Isn’t that odd? Why would somebody be burning fabric on their barbecue grill? I’m a smart fellow, and I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around that.”