Cody vaguely remembered his brothers saying that they would return, but when? He blinked three times, hard, and when his vision cleared, he realized that he must have been staring out the window for the better part of an hour. His legs hurt, his arms tingled, but it was all he could do to stay in that spot; something was calling—pulling—him away from this place, and he knew deep down that listening to that call would only end in tragedy—in something even worse than his current situation.
Come
The voice had gotten progressively louder over the past few hours, and Cody found it increasingly difficult to resist—his resolve was wavering.
Why shouldn’t I go? Why shouldn’t I leave this place?
And he knew that he should leave, just take Henrietta and go. Get help, send someone for Corina and Marley. Fuck, it had been four days—three days? Five?—surely some of the roads had to be clear by now.
Cody shook his head back and forth, trying to clear the frost from his grey matter. It wasn’t leaving he was afraid of, it was where he thought he would go that was most terrifying.
A noise suddenly snapped him back into reality, and he turned to Corina, who lay on the couch, her legs propped on Marley’s lap. She was staring at him, her eyes strangely vivid. It took him a moment to realize that it had been at least two full days since he had last seen her this way.
Maybe her leg wasn’t as bad as they had initially thought.
His eyes darted down her body. One glance at the now greenish-brown bandage on her shin suggested the opposite.
“Daddy?” she said, her voice soft but clear.
Cody looked at her, tears welling in his eyes.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“I need to go, Daddy.”
His brow furrowed.
Go? Go where?
As if she had heard his thoughts, she continued.
“I need to go to him, Daddy.”
Cody stopped breathing.
Him?
A slow nod from his daughter, as if she was affirming this fact to herself.
“I need to go to him. He wants me—” Her breath caught in her throat. “He wants me to come.”
Cody started to tremble. The word come had been uttered uncannily like the voice he had first thought had been carried on the wind, but was now convinced had been in his head the whole time. As he watched, unable to move, unable to breathe, his eldest daughter’s eyes rolled back in her head.
Cody gasped.
“Who?” he whispered, tears flowing down his cheeks. “Who wants you to come?”
No answer.
“Corina,” he begged, taking an aggressive step toward her, “who wants you to come?”
When she still didn’t answer, he took another step and crouched down, lining his face up with hers. Then, suddenly and without warning, her lids flickered and her brilliant green eyes stared directly into his.
“Oot’-keban, Daddy.” She paused. “Oot’-keban.”
2.
There Was No Time to think, and even if there had been time, thinking—real, cognizant reflection—would have likely been impossible; the thing’s rumbling laughter, like a persistent, monotone thunder, scrambled Oxford’s thoughts.
Mom; it has Mom’s eyes.
But even in the absence of that horrific noise, the suffocating darkness and equally suffocating need for his heroin was all-encompassing, and Oxford couldn’t remember which way his brother and the other man had gone. He ran right by the first and second doors, barely noticing them based on the fact that they were firmly closed, and then barged through the third, cringing when it banged loudly against the wall behind.
Squinting hard, Oxford looked around, trying to figure out what kind of room he was in. In the corner, he made out a leather lounge chair and a bookshelf on the wall to his right. There was also a large wad of something, like a huge stack of towels or blankets, piled up against the back wall, but it was too dark to make out what exactly they were from just inside the doorway. Oxford turned his attention back to the chair.
This will more than do, he thought, recalling all of the horrible places—alleyways, underpasses, and even once inside a dumpster—that he had shot up in his life.
Heart pounding in his chest, he unzipped his jacket no more than two inches and reached inside and slowly pulled out the black leather case. He couldn’t remember how much heroin had been in there—a gram? Maybe two?—after he had shot up at Mama’s house, but it didn’t matter.
I’m sorry, Mama.
What mattered was getting the stuff into him. What mattered was to forget.
And, for a brief moment, he did forget. He forgot about the power going out, Corina breaking her leg, him nearly overdosing and shitting himself, his fight with Cody, and last but good fucking Lord not least, he forgot about the huge mound of glistening green flesh consuming a man whole. As was his habit, his mind slowly began to adopt one singular focus: heroin.
In the next instant, Oxford was sitting on the chair, both his inner and outer jackets removed, one arm hanging out of his green turtleneck. There was a lot in the case, much more than he remembered, which was good. Another few seconds, and the heroin was boiled and loaded into the syringe.
His belt was almost completely out of his pant loops when he heard it. The laughing was there, had always been there, but now it was getting louder and was accompanied by something else: heavy depressions, waxing and waning, alternating like footsteps. It was like nothing he had heard, or, perhaps more appropriately, nothing he had felt before—except for once. And that had been roughly ten minutes ago while he had been stuffed in the closet with his brother. Watching. Waiting.
It’s coming.
The laughter intensified—slow and rumbling and, despite the lack of intonation, somehow mocking.
It’s coming for me. The thing with Mom’s eyes is coming for me.
Oxford wanted to inject the heroin, needed to inject it, but the laughter—real or imagined—grated him. It made him grind his teeth, it made his stomach churn, and it made his heart flutter.
Go away, he willed, his hand holding one end of the belt frozen in midair. Go away.
But the footsteps didn’t listen; instead, their cadence increased. It sounded like the thing had reached the top of the landing now, and Oxford’s inner monologue shifted from “Go away” to “Don’t come here”.
Beggars can’t be choosers, Mama used to say.
And this time, as if the thing had heard Oxford’s unspoken plea, its footsteps paused momentarily. Slowly, like a vascular surgeon threading a final suture, Oxford teased the belt completely out of his pant loops.
I can shoot—
But then the footsteps returned—not slow and sauntering and deliberate as they had been before, but with renewed vigor—desperation, even. Three more steps and they doubled their pace again. Oxford’s entire body went cold despite the stifling interior of Mrs. Wharfburn’s Estate. It knew he was in here and it was coming for him, of that he had no doubt.
He dropped the belt, tossed the spoon and lighter back into the leather case, and, still tightly clutching the filled syringe in his other hand, bolted from the chair. When the heavy compressions—now frantic, excited, aroused—reached the door, Oxford had no choice but to dive headlong into the pile of towels or blankets at the back of the room, hoping—praying—that there wasn’t a desk or chair hidden beneath them.
How does something that big, that heavy, move so fast?
His lunge landed him smack in the middle, and thankfully the blankets cushioned his awkward fall. Shifting his arms back and forth, Oxford swam his way into what he hoped was the center. The towels were horribly wet and sticky, making his progress difficult, and he found himself wriggling his hips just moments before the air in the room got incredibly hot. By chance, one of his eyes was left uncovered, and with it he spied the beast as it entered the room.
The failing light made it difficult to make out any distinct features, but the form was dark and heavy, that much he could tell—t
hat much he already knew—and it smelled god-awful. Truth be told, though, he couldn’t be sure if the smell was emanating from it or from the towels, which were themselves damp, sticky, and positively fetid. The heavy shape remained motionless in the doorway, and after a few seconds Oxford became aware of another sound: it was sniffing the room.
Oxford squinted hard with his one eye, trying to make out the thing’s face. He could see a shadow of a nose, a wide nose—wide but undeniably human—and two dark hollows where the thing’s eyes were buried deep in its head.
Please don’t have Mama’s eyes. I imagined that—please, please.
But the heavy shadows on its face thankfully prevented Oxford from making out anything specific.
The skin on its forehead was a lighter green than the rest, stretched tightly over its skull and the top of its head. Oxford saw the remnants of a pink scalp, complete with several tufts of short grey hair, but these seemed tenuous, swaying with every sniff as if they were ready to fall out in clumps.
It was from the nose down that things got sloppy: the skin around the lower jaw seemed extremely loose like the jowls of a morbidly obese man, an odd contrast to the thinly stretched green skin on the top of its head. Lower still, the sagging jowls eventually disappeared into shadows that somewhere became a massive torso. This, Oxford garnered, was a blessing: if he saw the imprint of the face inside the thing’s stomach again, it would be the end of him.
The sound came again—rapid, shallow sniffs—and Oxford’s cold body suddenly got hit with an adrenaline dump that sent his heart racing and made his face break out with sweat. He became acutely aware of the uncomfortable dampness around his crotch, and wondered if the thing could smell his piss. When the perspiration spread to his arms and then his hands, he adjusted his grip on the leather bag and syringe ever so subtly to make sure that he wouldn’t drop them into the pile of towels.
Oh my God.
His eyes widened and he almost gasped out loud.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.
The three words repeated in his head like a mantra, albeit with an urgency unsuitable for any form of meditation.
Oxford had somehow dropped the syringe when he had bolted from the chair. It took all of his waning willpower not to rocket to his feet, throw the towels off his body, and look for it. Biting the inside of his cheek so hard that he tasted blood, his eyes frantically scanned the room, rapidly oscillating back and forth.
Then he saw it: in the middle of the room, lying on the floor, the metal needle reflecting a sliver of moonlight.
How did I—?
But Oxford was not the only one who had seen the syringe. With two awkward, lurching movements, the shadow propelled its girth forward. The weight—the heaviness—of those steps made the fillings in Oxford’s teeth vibrate.
Don’t touch it! Leave it the fuck alone! Leave it alone, you fucking bastard! Don’t touch my fucking heroin!
The beast hesitated, and this wasn’t the first time that Oxford got the impression that it had somehow heard him. In the end, whether it heard him or not was irrelevant as it continued to move forward, one step closer to the syringe and one step closer to Oxford. With this latest movement, Oxford felt his vision blur from the strange increase in pressure. When the beast stopped advancing, his sight cleared just in time to see the thing bend over, or fold over, as it were, the body that it had consumed in the foyer somehow already mostly digested.
No, his mind whined, trying and failing to calculate how much dope he had left in the black satchel. Then it dawned on him that it wouldn’t matter how much dope he had left; there, lying inches from those horrific silver claws, was his only syringe. If the beast took that, it wouldn’t matter if he had a kilo or a milligram of heroin, he would not be getting high this day.
Just when Oxford neared his breaking point, something odd happened. First, the rumbling laughter ceased and Oxford felt some of the pressure that had been building in his head and ears over the past few minutes start to alleviate. But this relief was short-lived as the sound was almost immediately replaced by a guttural roar, a sound so deep and resonant that it vibrated Oxford’s eardrums almost to the point of bursting. Still growling, the thing spun more quickly than Oxford would have thought possible given its size, and it bolted from the room, squeezing its dark green frame through the doorway. The sound and sudden movement did something to Oxford’s mind, and he witnessed a blur of colors. The colors transitioned to monochrome, and his vision narrowed to a thin tunnel. He had felt this sensation before, and knew that it would be only moments before he passed out. But as the footsteps receded further and further from the room, and then down the stairs, the feeling began to pass, and his vision and mind slowly returned.
What the fuck just happened?
Oxford had all but conceded that he was going to be devoured by the thing with Mama’s eyes, headfirst like the skinless man, and his only regret was that he hadn’t shot up first. But then the beast had reached over and inspected the syringe, and—
Oxford’s eyes finally focused on the needle lying in the center of the room. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would have thought that the beast hadn’t even noticed it, let alone picked it up and—he squinted harder—depressed the plunger.
Something wet and sticky slapped against his cheek, and now, alone in the room, he shifted his stiff shoulders, debating whether or not he should wait a little longer before getting out from under the towels. When he moved again, the wet blanket on his face slipped over the eye he had been using to peer out into the room.
Sick.
He tried to shake his head to move it from his face, but for a towel, even a wet one, it had an unusual weight to it, and it stuck to him as if it were covered in drying glue. Cautiously, ready to freeze immediately should the hulking green form return, he fumbled with the leather case in his left hand, trying to work his fingers inside without disturbing his cover. His searching fingers eventually found the lighter and he pulled it out, moving it up near his face.
After slowly and deliberately raising the towel with one hand, he flicked the lighter once, twice, and on the third try it ignited, the spark so bright at first that it was temporarily blinding. The flame licked at the edges of one of the towels, causing the fire to puff and the towel to crackle. Oxford instantly let his thumb fall from the gas, once again ready to retract his arm and freeze should he hear something—anything.
Nothing.
There was something, though; not a sound, but a smell; something new, something different from the musty funk of the towels and the rot inside the house that he had become accustomed to. To Oxford, it didn’t smell like a burning towel, it smelled like...
Burning hair?
He flicked the wheel again, but it had become slick and his thumb kept slipping; it took six tries to light. Moving the flame closer to his face, he inspected the towel that he had been holding up with the back of his other hand. It was only then that he noticed his entire hand and arm were completely red.
What the fuck?
Trying to keep the lighter lit, he rubbed his fingers together and was sickened by the way they stuck to each other.
Oxford allowed his gaze to move from his red hand to the towel and his mouth fell open.
No.
A sound—a noise somewhere between a scream and a moan—burst from his open mouth.
3.
It Was Dark, And without the moonlight reflecting off the snow, Alice wouldn’t have been able to see anything. As it was, when she first stumbled up to the squad car, she thought it was Coggins’. It wasn’t until she got closer that she was able to make out three letters peeking from beneath a layer of snow on the driver’s side door: –iff.
It was Sheriff Drew’s car.
Where is Bradley’s cruiser?
When she saw nothing but clean white snow along the road for the meagre few hundred meters that she could make out, she started to panic.
Tell me he didn’t fucking leave!
/> The last thing she wanted to do was see the sheriff right now, especially without Brad as a buffer.
Alice took a step toward the squad car, comforted by the cha cha cha of the pills buried in her coat pocket.
I’ll have one more, she thought, to take the edge off.
An image of the smiling face on the wall of Cody’s house—the man she had been with what seemed a fortnight ago—flashed in her mind. Then she saw the old woman in the tub, with the one thicket of grey hair covering the side of her face. To Alice, the most disturbing part of that scene hadn’t been the woman’s eyes or face or even her blue lips; it had been her dress, so neat and proper, and her hair, meticulous, nearly perfect, save the part that spilled from her bun. It just didn’t seem right.
Or maybe I’ll have two pills.
The door to the squad car was unlocked, but she didn’t find the keys inside. Not under the visor, where she knew the sheriff liked to keep them, and they hadn’t fallen beneath the seat, either. But it was no matter; all she needed was somewhere to shield herself from the wind and a place to rest her legs while she had herself another clonny.
Even before she brought the small, inconspicuous pill to her lips, exhaustion hit her and she felt her eyelids droop. It had been an extremely long three days, starting with the horrible encounter with the filthy man with the scraggly beard—where’s my H—and ending here, after running away from Cody and his dead mother.
Alice wondered how the poor man would react when he discovered the woman, and she hoped for both his sake and the sake of the kids that she was found after the power was restored, after some semblance of normalcy returned. Her mind turned to the little girl with the upturned nose, and how she had been crying incessantly ever since Alice arrived; even she knew that something was horribly wrong here in Askergan County.
The wind blew strongly against the open door, and Alice groggily tucked her legs in and then reached over and pulled it closed.
Come
“Shut up,” she grumbled, bringing the pill to her lips. She swallowed and fell asleep before her head struck the headrest.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 21
