4.
Jared Was Partway Out of the bathroom when he first heard the rumbling groan. Instinctively, his hands went to his ears, but while this muted the sound, it did nothing to block out the vibrations. For nearly thirty seconds, the sound rolled on before finally subsiding. The horrible sound was chased by rapid depressions that sounded like they were receding back down the stairs. After a few moments, Jared pulled his hands away from the sides of his head and ground his teeth in an attempt to equalize the pressure.
Then he heard the scream.
Jared immediately reached for the deputy’s arm and squeezed it tightly. Even after the scream stopped, they stood there with their backs pressed flat against the wall, frozen in fear. Jared’s breaths came in short, terse bursts as his mind raced. Though the scream had an awful moaning quality to it, it most certainly could have been Oxford. And as far as they knew, he was the only other one here.
An image of the green beast with the pink, fleshy stripes flashed in his mind.
Correction, he thought. The only other human here.
They listened in silence as the footsteps made their way to the bottom of the stairs. Only then, after at least a full minute of not hearing any sound at all, did they dare move. When the deputy finally turned to face him, his narrow face was pinched and his eyebrows pushed down over the dark pits that housed his eyes.
He was tired too, Jared realized. Not as tired as he, surely, but tired just as well. There was sweat on his brow, and Jared noticed that he had once again drawn his gun. The small pistol looked tiny in his pale hand.
I’m going back, Jared thought, or maybe he said it out loud, because Coggins nodded.
“Get behind me,” the deputy whispered, despite the fact that they had established that the thing had poor hearing, if it could hear at all.
Even after leaving the bathroom, neither the deputy nor Jared heard or felt any further movement from below. For a fleeting moment, Jared let himself believe that the thing had left, fled out the front door, never to be seen again—like the Sasquatch or Loch Ness. But he knew better; the temperature was the clue. The thing’s bastardized metabolism—digestion; it was digesting the poor man—was generating the disgusting smell and horrible heat.
The first room off the hallway they entered was nearly empty, save a half-knitted scarf hanging from an old, wooden chair in the center. The second room was much the same, with the moonlight casting long shadows throughout.
It was in the third room that they eventually found Oxford.
This room was darker than the others, and it was dank as well, the warm air holding a strange meaty smell tinged with coppery undertones. Jared forced himself to breathe through his mouth as his eyes scanned the room.
Just inside the door, on their left, was a worn leather chair, and at the back of the room there was a large pile of what looked like towels or laundry, but before Jared could take a closer look at the odd shapes, movement from a rounded figure beneath the window drew his attention. At first he thought that this too was just a pile of clothing, but when he squinted hard, he wasn’t so sure.
The deputy turned to leave, to check the next room, but Jared blocked his path.
“Wait,” he said.
He pushed by the deputy and took two steps into the room, trying his best to make out the figure in the dim moonlight. He paused, indicating with a raised hand for the deputy behind him to stop. Then he saw it: the slow rise and fall of what he now knew was his brother’s back.
“Oxford!” he whispered loudly as he ran to his younger brother.
It was Oxford—it had to be Oxford—but as he approached, he realized that there was something different about his brother. Hunched over with his head between his knees and his back to Jared, his shirt and jeans looked wet, as if he had jumped into a swimming pool.
What the hell?
Jared cautiously crouched behind his brother, tentatively laying a hand on his back, trying to lean around him to see his face. Immediately, Jared retracted his hand; his brother’s back was sticky.
“Oxford,” he whispered, wiping his hand on his pants.
Oxford screamed.
Startled, Jared fell on his ass and then quickly scrambled to a prone position. He glanced quickly at Deputy Coggins, who had since crept into the room behind him. Together, they waited in silence, listening. Hoping. Praying.
Nothing—no other sound. Oxford’s head had been so buried in his lap that the scream had been muffled.
They needed to get out of there—get out now.
Jared crab walked closer to his brother, again wiping his sticky hand on his thigh. This time, he didn’t touch Oxford.
“Ox,” he whispered. “Ox, it’s me.”
When that generated no response, he leaned in closer.
“It’s your brother, Jared.”
What the fuck happened to him? What did that thing do to him?
Oxford slowly turned his head and stared up at him. Again Jared was caught by surprise, and would have fallen backward had Deputy Coggins not come up behind him and gently pressed his shin against his spine.
Oxford’s face was covered in blood.
“Jesus—”
“The faces,” Oxford whispered.
Jared stared. His brother’s face was covered in blood—his cheeks, nose, and even his lips were marred by streaks of the tacky dark brown substance.
The faces?
“Oxford, are you hurt?” he gasped.
“The faces,” Oxford sobbed. “The faces are all staring at me!”
He reached for Jared with two bloody hands, but Jared stopped him by grabbing his wrists. It was only then that he realized that Oxford was no longer wearing his jacket, and that one of his arms had been pulled out of his turtleneck.
Shit.
“Oxford,” he said, louder now, trying to get through to his brother, “did you shoot up?”
His hands still held in midair inches from Jared’s face, Oxford answered.
“The faces…”
“Oxford!” Jared repeated, more forcefully this time. “Did you fucking shoot up?”
Oxford spat a spray of blood on the floor beside where Jared crouched.
It can’t be his blood—there’s just way too much of it.
“The faces, Jared… the faces are all staring at me.”
His words were slurred and his eyes seemed to bob in his head, unable to focus.
Jared ignored the nonsensical response and instead craned his neck to look at Oxford’s back. The man’s outer two pairs of pants had been pulled down a few inches, but this was not what bothered him. It was the base layer: Oxford’s belt was no longer in the loops.
Jared quickly glanced around the room and eventually identified a belt lying beside Oxford’s jacket by the leather recliner. And then he saw something else, too—a syringe lying abandoned in the center of the room.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!
Jared thrust Oxford’s hands to his sides. Then it was his turn to reach out and grasp the man’s blood-streaked face in his palms. His hands stuck uncomfortably to his tacky cheeks, but Jared, now convinced that none of this was Oxford’s blood, tried his best to ignore the sensation—the disgusting feeling beneath his palms brought with it too many questions, ones that would eventually require answering. But there was one question that was more pressing, more immediate.
“Jesus,” he heard the deputy whisper behind him, clearly noticing the blood for the first time.
Jared ignored him.
“Oxford, did you use?”
Memories of Oxford lying on the stairs of his mother’s house came flooding back. If he was high, they were going to have to drag him out of the Estate.
Oxford tried to move his head, but Jared’s grip held fast; the man resigned himself to looking at the floor.
Jared felt a gentle nudge on his back.
“We should get moving,” Coggins said, his voice strangely high-pitched.
“Look at me,” Jared demanded, tightening
his grip on Oxford’s narrow, blood-covered cheeks. “Did you use?”
Oxford looked up, and Jared saw a deep sadness buried in his dark eyes.
“No,” he finally whispered, “I wanted to, but...”
“But what, Ox?”
“...but he didn’t like it.”
Oxford’s voice was so quiet now that Jared had to lean in close to hear. His brother’s breath was stale and hot on his ear, but these smells were secondary to the nearly overwhelming coppery smell of blood. He felt his stomach flip.
“Who?” he asked, swallowing hard.
When Oxford looked away again, Jared squeezed his face even harder.
“Who didn’t like it, Oxford? Who? Who the fuck didn’t like it?”
This time he answered without looking up; two words, or maybe one.
“Oot’-keban,” Oxford whispered, his entire body, including his sticky face, trembling in Jared’s hands. “Oot’-keban.”
5.
Alice Could Feel The beginnings of a migraine forming behind her eyes when she awoke.
Where am I? she wondered, staring out the windshield.
Then it came flooding back to her—the night out, the creep, the storm, and the dead woman in the bathtub.
What am I doing here?
But then she remembered that, too: she was here to meet up with Coggins and Sheriff Drew and get some help for the handsome man and his poor family—they were in a bad spot.
Alice adjusted her cap and sat up, her migraine inching closer to the back of her eyes with every movement. Slowly, trying to coax her headache into submission, she opened the cruiser door and tried to pull herself out of the vehicle.
A groan escaped her lips and she slumped back down into the seat. Falling asleep in the front seat of the cruiser had done nothing to help ease the soreness on her right side from the accident. Gritting her teeth, she braved the pain and this time managed to sit up and step out into the cold.
The wind had finally stopped blowing, leaving the air frigid but surprisingly tolerable. As Alice made her way through the snow, following in what must have been the sheriff’s or Coggins’ footprints, the oddness of the cruiser being left unlocked and the door to Mrs. Wharfburn’s house thrown wide suddenly dawned on her. Now that the pills had mostly worn off, a new emotion—worry—started to build like the headache behind her eyes. Her pace quickened, and she found herself almost running to the door, stumbling, nearly impaling herself on the many large branches that dotted the lawn.
The blast of warm air that hit Alice when she was within a couple yards of the door almost went unnoticed—that came secondary to the smell.
Jesus.
Instinctively, she brought the arm of her ACPD jacket up to cover her nose. Then Alice turned her head sideways, took a massive gulp of cold air, and stepped inside.
It was dim in the foyer, and Alice struggled to make out anything specific. There were some piles of clothing scattered about the floor, and her first thought was that someone had robbed the place, which would explain the sheriff coming here, and maybe Coggins as well. In the center of the room, Alice noticed a reflective pool of something that could have been melted snow. She stared at the liquid for a moment and slowly began to convince herself that maybe it wasn’t water after all.
It was too thick, too coagulated.
Against her better judgement, Alice took a quick breath in through her nostrils. She could smell blood underneath the foul scent.
Something had happened here.
Something bad. Something wrong.
Alice pulled her gaze away from what she was now convinced was blood, and tried to look deeper into the house.
It was no use; the only thing she could make out in the darkness was two stairways that flanked the foyer receded upwards into darkness.
It was then, only after her olfactory senses had been desensitized by the inundating stench, that she noticed the odd warmth of the house.
Funny; I didn’t hear the generator.
It dawned on her that the door had been open as well.
How the hell is a place as big as this holding heat with no power and the door wide open?
All of these questions made her feel tired again, and her headache crept a few millimeters closer to her retinas. She pulled off her gloves—technically Cody’s gloves—and tossed them on the bench by the door. Then she undid her jacket down to her collarbone. With her now bare hands, she pulled out the little jar of pills and put three in her palm before resealing the container and putting it carefully back in her pocket.
Maybe they left the door open to air the place out? An animal crawled into the septic tank and a pipe burst, perhaps?
As she mulled this over, she heard the first of the scuttling noises coming from somewhere upstairs. Her hand made a fist and the three hard pills dug into her palm.
“Hello?” she shouted into the darkness.
Silence.
“Hello?” she repeated. “Anyone there?”
She heard more scurrying, followed by what sounded like an intense, whispered exchange.
“Hello? Sheriff?”
Her voice was more timid now, apprehensive.
What’s going on?
“Dana? Brad?”
All of the shouting had matured Alice’s headache, and it progressed to a solid throbbing in her temples and behind her eyes. She was about to put the three clonnys in her mouth when there was a sudden flurry of activity up above. A moment later, several figures appeared on the landing, and Alice squinted to make out their faces.
“Alice?”
A man’s face came into focus at the same time he said her name, and relief washed over her.
“Brad!” she nearly shouted, but when his face contorted, her enthusiasm wavered.
“Alice, you need to run,” Deputy Bradley Coggins whispered over the railing. “You need to get the fuck out of here and run. You need to run now!”
Alice’s mouth fell open, and she would have thought it a cruel joke—it was not beyond Brad to joke even at a time like this—but it was his eyes, big, round, and black, that instantly clued her to the fact that he wasn’t fucking around.
“What?” Her mouth hung open.
“Alice,” he continued more desperately. “Go! Get the fuck out of here! Run!”
A shadow, one of the other figures, shuffled awkwardly toward the railing. After squinting for a moment, she realized that it wasn’t just one person as she had first thought, but two; a slim man who looked oddly familiar holding the even thinner frame of another man. Judging by his posture—his head hung low, feet not firmly planted on the ground—this second man was either unconscious or very sick—and wet. For some reason, he also looked wet.
A reflection of moonlight flashed off something to the right of the two men, bringing her attention back to Deputy Coggins. His gun was drawn and he was holding it in front of him. In the five plus years that she had known him, he had only pulled his gun from his holster once. She knew, because she had helped him write the report.
“Alice,” he pleaded, his eyes looking watery even in the dim light. “Just go. Please.”
What the fuck?
Alice found herself tongue-tied.
The man to Coggins’ left nodded vigorously.
“Go,” the other man reiterated, his voice hoarse.
At the sound of the word Go, the sickly man lifted his head, and Alice saw his face for the first time.
No.
The single word flashed in her head like lightning. Then, like thunder chasing the boiling air, the migraine that had been slowly building exploded, sending her vision swirling and bringing with it a pain in her stomach like someone had driven a pickaxe between her lower ribs.
How could it be?
Although she couldn’t remember his name, his face was unmistakable: it was the man in the photograph at Cody’s house, the man from the night she had gone drinking after work, the man who had left before the bearded creep had appeared. His face was streaked
by what looked like a deep crimson paint, but it was the same man. She knew it.
And now he is here. Here with Brad.
“Alice—”
At first Alice thought that the reason why she hadn’t heard the rest of Deputy Coggins’ sentence was because she had been deafened by the headache that pulsated in her ears. But when the deputy and the other man retreated from the bannister, and the third man’s eyes rolled back and he fell limply to the floor with a muffled flop, she realized that she hadn’t heard the end of Brad’s sentence simply because he hadn’t said anything else; he had stopped at “Alice”.
But now the deputy spoke again, and Alice heard these three words loud and clear.
“Oh. My. God.”
6.
Cody Had Been Staring at the snowy lawn for a long, long time. The sun had set, the sky had darkened, and the full moon had appeared, illuminating the snow as if someone had laid millions of tiny white lights on the lawn prior to the storm. He had been crying off and on for the last few hours. It was a vicious cycle; he cried because of his inability to act, and when he cried he felt unable to do anything.
I have to leave. I have to leave this place. I have to leave now. I want to go. I have to go. I have to come.
He had been thinking this almost since they had arrived, and most definitely ever since the power went out. But what bothered him most, oddly, wasn’t the fact that his brother had nearly overdosed and shit himself, nor that his eldest daughter had broken her leg, which had now turned an awful black and green and smelled of sulfur. It wasn’t even that his wife was essentially comatose, or that his mother, God bless her, had been gone for so long that only the worst seemed realistic; no, none of that pain made him feel as sour as his desire to leave. Not to take his family and seek shelter—warmer, better shelter—but to leave on his own and to hurry east, like the man with the broken knee, the strange woman with the jet black hair, like the bears, the wolves, the deer, and the dogs. He was being pulled east. And this scared him, scared him more than anything.
I need to get out of here. I need to go west. South. I need to go south—anywhere but east.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 22
