But he ran onward, these sensations an afterthought to the horror he had just experienced.
He had no obvious destination; he only knew that he had to get as far away from the house as possible—as far away from those things as possible. But no matter how fast he ran, or how loud the blood rushing in his ears or the wheezy gasps from his own spit-covered lips as his lungs desperately tried to soak up oxygen, he heard that snapping sound.
Crack.
Crack.
Crack
Crack.
Crack.
Crack.
Kent heard those cracks, like distinct knuckles, each with their own identical synovial bubble being popped.
No matter how fast Kent ran, he heard the palil, the crackers.
Epilogue
Silence.
Sheriff Paul White was aware of his breathing, but he couldn’t hear it. The only thing he heard were the boy’s words repeating over and over in his mind like a strange mantra.
I have no idea how I got out…
And it was the boy’s choice of words, the strange ones, the ones that were not English.
The ones that he had never heard before, but somehow sounded familiar to him.
Palil.
It was a word that should have meant nothing to him, but somehow it did. Somehow that word epitomized the shit that went down at the Wharfburn Estate both this time and six years ago during the blizzard.
The sheriff opened his mouth to say something, but he found that his throat was too dry to squeeze the words out. Instead, he reached across the table and grabbed the half-full glass of water from the boy and took a sip.
Then he cleared his throat and at long last addressed the two people across from him.
“Kent, I want to thank you for coming down here, for telling me what happened.”
It had been a fantastical story, one that seemed impossible.
But the boy’s recounting had been flawless, down to the very minute details.
Gregory Griddle nodded.
“What happens now, Sheriff?”
The sheriff took a moment to contemplate this.
What do I do next?
“Sheriff?”
Paul looked from the man back to the boy with the red face. Kent turned to his father, and the man wrapped his arms around his son, comforting him.
Despite what the sheriff believed, the boy’s father believed all of his son’s tale.
“I think—” The sheriff cleared his throat again. “I think there is someone else I need to talk to.”
Gregory nodded.
“What about us? What do we do now?”
“You guys go home and get some rest.”
Gregory’s expression remained blank, vacant.
Rest? He berated himself for the suggestion. There was no way these two were going to be able to sleep. Not after…
He turned to Kent, whose face was now completely buried in his father’s armpit.
After what the boy had seen, he doubted that rest was something that Kent could even comprehend at this point—and probably not for a long, long time.
“Try,” the sheriff reiterated, doing his best not to placate. “I have someone to talk to, and I’m sure that he will want to speak to you too.”
I have someone who I need to talk to, someone who was also inside the Wharfburn Estate, Paul wished he could say. Someone who might be able to make sense of all of this.
“But we are going to find your friend, Kent,” he continued.
Someone who has their own secrets, ones that rival the dark tale that you just uttered, Kent.
Gregory leaned toward his son and kissed him on his forehead. Then he nodded to the sheriff.
“Please, anything we can do to help.”
The man stood and they shook hands.
“I mean that. Anything.”
The sheriff nodded.
Someone who likely has as much trouble sleeping at night as you will, Kent. I need to find the boy; I need to find Tyler Wandry.
And Bradley Coggins can help, no matter his state of mind.
End
Flesh
Insatiable Series Book 3
Patrick Logan
Prologue
Sweat beaded on the bricks, tiny droplets of perspiration in the form of condensed humidity. It was unbearably hot in the basement, and the air was thick, housing equal parts dust and water.
A hand suddenly reached out of the hole in the floor, the long, thin fingers stretching skyward. Bright sunlight from the open doorway splayed between the digits. As the arm continued to stretch upward, a thin forearm cleared the opening, followed by the inner side of a knobby elbow. Without warning, the arm came down on the hardwood, the fingers spread out, desperately seeking purchase on the dusty floor.
There was a grunt, and then another hand appeared, only this one was heavy, almost bulbous, the fingers not clearly discernable from each other, each blending together like a mitten. When it landed on the floor above, it did so with an ungainly thud.
The hands and arms tensed, and a figure rose clumsily out of the basement, collapsing onto the floor and rolling onto its back with another series of grunts.
Grey shafts of light continued to penetrate the abandoned Estate, slipping through tiny cracks and holes in the boards that covered the windows. A large flood of light spilled through the open front door, reflecting off the dust motes that fluttered in the newly disturbed air.
Hot. Too hot.
The naked figure flipped onto its front and then labored to its feet, remaining hunched at the waist, hiding its upper half from the offensive sunlight. The thing’s mottled flesh was covered in sweat, but unlike the bricks in the basement below, the beads were not individual entities, but had coalesced into a sheen that covered the entire surface of its entire body. With several desperate, lurching strides, it made its way to the back of the house, creeping its way along the cabinets that lined the kitchen, then strafed the wall as it tried to stay out of the direct sunlight.
The back of the house had been boarded up, but it managed to pry these rotten planks off without much effort, despite having to resort to using its only good hand.
A sigh escaped the thing as it exited the house and entered the still cool and dewy morning air, the shadow provided by the peaked roof of the Estate protecting the area from the sun’s onslaught for the time being.
It wouldn’t last long.
The shambling mass avoided the large swimming pool, its meandering gait taking it wide to avoid an unfortunate misstep. When its feet left the cobblestones and touched the cool grass, another wave of relief washed over it, culminating in a veritable shudder that made its progress look robotic, as if filmed at a low framerate.
At the back of the property was a culvert, an ancient cement tunnel that led beneath a small two-lane road.
The figure collapsed in the shady interior of the tunnel, not bothering to push aside the network of spider webs or detritus that lined the interior of the forgotten passage.
Cool; the cement was cool, and was a welcome relief to his overheating face and stomach.
As it shut its eyes, the skin on its naked back just above the left shoulder blade suddenly began to stretch, pushing the already extended membrane to its maximum. An outline became apparent beneath the blistering white skin, a protruding oval about six inches across; an oval with six knobby, articulated limbs.
The skin on the figure’s back puckered, then tore. A groan escaped its chapped lips, but it wasn’t a manifestation of pain; rather, sweet relief washed over it as the tension from its stretched skin was momentarily relieved. A warm wetness spread from the spot on its back from where the cracker had budded, a wetness that could only be one thing: blood.
It didn’t matter.
What mattered was the cool cement on its stomach; what mattered was the relief from its stretched skin.
The individual points of the cracker’s appendages, all six of them, slowly pressed into its skin, m
aking small indentations just outside of the wound. A moment later, the hole that it had erupted from slowly began to become obscured, a layer of milky white skin pushing up to the surface. Another few seconds and the ragged, bloody hole was completely replaced by this new layer of thin white flesh.
A cracking sound echoed off of the undulating walls of the culvert; six cracks, all the same cadence.
Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack.
Then the cracker was gone, leaving what was once a boy lying face down on his stomach, alone, his skin beginning to stretch again, the outline of another cracker slowly becoming visible beneath the surface.
PART I – BUDDING
1.
The man with the bushy red beard raised his head from his lap and looked around.
The bathroom was filthy, the walls—which might have once been white, or in the very least eggshell—were now so streaked with dirty grey smudges that they seemed to meld into an obscene background color. There was the usual graffiti, phone numbers etched with red pens and promises of sexual acts of the kind that might have once made him blush. There were the ubiquitous swastikas, drops of blood, promises of castration, and various curses, each less intelligible than the last. But none of these were of interest to him.
The slurping sound from between his legs stopped for a moment, and he turned his gaze downward.
A pair of bright green eyes stared up at him, expectant.
“Don’t stop,” he instructed the woman.
The woman nodded and then buried her head in his lap once more.
No, none of the graffiti bothered him, except for one.
He leaned forward, and the woman kneeling on the floor between his legs shifted to accommodate his movements. Her pace quickened, clearly misinterpreting his gesture. On the left wall of the bathroom stall was a picture of a large shape, something akin to a morbidly obese man, crudely drawn with a green crayon. It was a generally featureless mass, except for two vertical lines in yellow at the center of its head. Beneath the shape were two words: Oot’-keban.
The man’s breath caught in his throat and he blinked hard, not believing what he was seeing. He leaned forward further, reaching out with his hand to wipe some of the grime away.
The woman protested, again pulling her head up, but this time, instead of indicating for her to continue, he used his other hand to push her head to one side.
She grumbled something but he ignored her, moving closer still to the crudely drawn shape. When his eyes focused in the dim light, a sigh escaped him. It wasn’t a person after all, just a green circle. And what he had first thought were yellow eyes were just a row of lights that went all the way around the shape. The words beneath the space ship weren’t Oot’-keban, either, but Art Cabin.
Spaceship. Just a fucking alien spaceship.
He slumped back onto the top of the toilet seat, his heartrate finally returning to normal. The woman between his legs set about returning to her business, but any semblance of mood in the grimy stall was gone.
“Naw,” he grumbled, using the palm of his hand to push her forehead away again.
She looked up at him, her mouth open, incredulous. She had a shock of white-blonde hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, which was obviously meant to serve two purposes: the color was supposed to make her look younger, and the tight ponytail was meant to stretch out her skin, smooth some of the wrinkles.
Both attempts failed; this was a woman who had been around the block, a fact that was reflected in her tired face.
“What you mean, ‘No’?”
She smacked a piece of bubble gum loudly and pushed a stray strand of white hair from her face.
The man began to stand.
“I mean, ‘no’—not in the mood anymore.” His words were languid, apathetic.
She smacked the gum several more times before slowly pulling herself to her feet.
“Well, you’re still paying me,” she informed him, her mouth tight. Her hands smoothed and lowered the short jean skirt that had ridden up when she had squatted.
He looked away, pushing the stall door open behind her. The woman stepped backward.
“Fine,” he said absently, hiking up his own jeans.
He tucked himself back in and then zipped up his jeans. Then he reached into his wallet and pulled out a fifty. He hadn’t even put his wallet back into his back pocket before her manicured hand reached out and snatched the bill from him.
Then she blew a large pink bubble and turned away, stepping out of the stall and going over to the large, cracked mirror above a porcelain sink.
“Thanks,” she said between chews.
“Whatever,” he grumbled.
The man stretched his back, then watched as the prostitute leaned close to the mirror and opened her mouth wide, using one of her fingers to wipe away smeared lipstick from the corner of her lips.
As the man left the stall and made his way toward the door leading back to the bar, the woman turned to him again.
“There are pills for that, you know,” she said, her expression tight.
“Pills? For what?”
The woman’s large green eyes drifted down his body and her gaze lingered on his crotch.
The man laughed.
“It’s not me, baby, it’s you,” he said, and then laughed again at the confused look that fell on her pale face.
The palm of his hand struck the back of the door and pushed it open an inch. Music and loud voices articulated their way through the opening. Now it was his turn to stop and face her.
“Anyways,” he continued, the smile still plastered on his bearded face, “that was my last fifty. Care to buy a fella a drink?”
2.
An arm slowly snaked its way around her neck, the fingers dissecting her chin that had been driven protectively her chest. The girl grunted, trying to shake the man’s body from her back, but he was too heavy, his center of gravity too high up on her shoulders. On her elbows and knees, she crouched herself into a tight ball, trying to build up as much potential energy as possible, conserving her strength for one final explosive move.
Just as her assailant’s fingers reached his bicep on the other side of her neck, but before he could lock in the chokehold, the girl exploded, turning her head quickly into the choke while at the same time sliding one of her legs flat. The spontaneity and precision of the movement caught the man off guard, and in one smooth motion, she turned her body over, flipping her assailant onto his back.
Breathing heavily, she found herself on top of the man, sitting on his chest, staring down at his tense face, his eyes staring up at her in surprise.
But this man was a brown belt, and his surprise was only temporary.
The man bucked her unexpectedly, and she, being at least thirty pounds lighter, became airborne, her body launched up toward his head. Her first instinct was to come down on his head with her elbows, driving his head into the mat beneath them, but she fought this urge and attempted instead to land gracefully.
In the end, her intentions were irrelevant, as immediately after he bucked her, the man slid down her body, grabbing ahold of her right ankle as he passed. In one smooth transition, he hooked her heel under his arm and gave her leg a yank, pulling her onto her back for the second time in the last forty seconds.
“Fuck,” she swore, momentarily dazed when the back of her head made contact with the ground.
This time, the man didn’t make the mistake of slowly locking in his hold; this time, his grip was fast and furious, and before she knew it, her ankle was wrenched completely sideways, and with one of the man’s legs laced across her chest, she found herself unable to roll out of the heel-hook.
She grunted and tried to reach for the man’s leg, to defend against the ankle lock by putting him into one of her own, but he twisted his legs away from her. Her fingers reached across the mat, desperate now, the pressure building in her quad, trying to seek out any part of the man’s body that she might be able to attack.
&n
bsp; Nothing—her desperate fingers found no purchase.
The man grunted and increased the pressure on her ankle.
“Tap,” he demanded. He yanked her foot again, turning it so far that it was almost perpendicular. “Tap.”
The girl shifted her hips, trying to buck him as he had done to her in an attempt to get him to loosen his grip so that she might pull her leg out from beneath his armpit and yank herself to her feet.
It was no use. His grip was solid, unbreakable.
“Tap,” he repeated a third time. He twisted her ankle beyond ninety degrees as he spoke, emphasizing his words.
Now it was her turn to do something unexpected. Instead of trying to turn into the hold and protect her ankle, she turned against it. This only helped tighten the man’s grip, as her foot became even more anchored in his armpit. This move, a seemingly basic mistake, actually surprised the man, and she felt his grip loosen for a moment. Yet she did not alter course and try to get out of the hold; she had tried that already and knew it wouldn’t work. Besides, as before, the man’s surprise was short-lived, and he quickly clamped his arms down, doubling the pressure on her ankle.
With a grunt of her own, she twisted her hips as hard as she could, and an audible pop filled the gym. This time, the man’s surprise was so great that he completely let go of her ankle, his eyes bulging from his sockets in horror. At this point, however, it didn’t matter—she was already out.
“What the fuck?” The man’s face twisted as the girl’s leg suddenly came free just above the knee and he was stuck holding nothing but a prosthetic limb.
Insatiable Series Omnibus Edition (Books 1-3) Page 37
