by Ray Garton
“Oh, God,” he said.
Emily hadn’t gone down on him in years. She’d done it a lot before they were married, but afterward, it had become more infrequent, until it had stopped altogether. As she sucked on him, he got hard in her mouth and let his head fall back, rolled his eyes up in his head as he closed them and moaned. She hummed with him in her mouth, then made a low, guttural sound in her throat. She climbed back up his body, reached down, inserted him, and bounced up and down on him, laughing like a child.
Hugh closed his eyes and just enjoyed it. It had been a long time since Emily had shown this kind of enthusiasm in bed. He did not understand it—it made no sense under the circumstances, given the fact that she’d just been raped, and had just killed her rapist, for crying out loud—but he did not think about it.
He rolled with it. And it was great, like the old days—if he closed his eyes and forgot about how fat she’d gotten, it was their honeymoon in Mexico all over again. Emily was making the same laughing but desperate sounds, clutching at him in the same way, blindly and tightly, her nails scratching his skin, breath coming in a fast pant. Then she clamped her lips together tightly and started to make high humming sounds through her nose. She was getting close. It was a familiar sound, such a good sound, Hugh couldn’t help smiling a little. She embraced him and held him almost smotheringly tight as she came, pounding down on him harder, holding him desperately, crying out repeatedly, “Oh! Oh!” Then she stopped moving and pressed herself down on him hard and ground her hips over him for awhile, moaning softly. She put her mouth over his, sucked on his tongue as she ground on him. Then she slowly started humping him again.
Hugh laughed a little and whispered, “What, are we going again?”
“Fuck, yeah, I want more,” she whispered through a beaming smile. “I’m horny, sweetheart, and I just really, really need to fuck until I drop right now, okay?”
He shrugged. “I hope I hold out long enough.”
She kept moving slowly up and down on him.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take breaks if you want.” She giggled. “We can fuck all night, right? I mean, you’re not going to work in the morning, are you?”
“No,” he said, smiling.
“And you’re still hard right now, right?”
“Like a rock.”
“Then there’s no problem, is there?”
He laughed. “None that I can see.”
“Okay, then. I’m going to roll over, and I want you to fuck me hard. You hear me? Hard.”
Hugh had no problem with that plan at all.
At one point, at the height of their passion, both of them gasping for breath and shiny with sweat as they approached orgasm, Emily made a sound that almost made Hugh stop and sit up on his knees. She growled. It was deep, throaty—so uncharacteristic of her—that it was startling, and a little frightening. More than a little. It did not sound like her at all. But he was too close to coming, and he quickly swept the growl from his mind and focused on his imminent ejaculation.
In a few seconds, he felt like growling himself, and he was not entirely certain that he didn’t.
17
Vanessa Peterman
“You really need to go,” she said, still smiling as they stood facing each other beside the bed. Somehow, she could not stop smiling, in spite of her greatest efforts. He was such an enthusiastic young man, her masseur. He always made her feel good, made her smile. His name was Oscar, but everyone called him Ossie. He was quite well hung, and Vanessa enjoyed teasing him about it. He was the only man she’d ever known whom she could tease about his penis. Most men would crumble at remarks about their members. Not Ossie. He was quite secure about his penis.
“Why can’t I stay the night?” he asked.
“Because I said no, that’s why,” she answered. “I have to get up early in the morning and go to work, and I won’t have time to see you off then. So you’ll have to go now. I mean, of course, I’d love to have you in bed for the night, but ... no. You have to go.”
He was still naked, and he stood before her all bronze and rippling. With his shaggy black hair and impeccably tanned and cut muscles, he looked like he belonged on the cover of a paperback romance novel, or in an underwear ad.
Vanessa was naked as well, and she stepped forward, pressed her body to his, and embraced him. They kissed. The kiss lasted longer than she’d intended, and she felt his thick penis begin to harden against her thigh.
“No, no,” she said, gently pulling away from him. “Time to go.”
He finally put on his clothes. She remained naked as she walked him through the apartment to the door, where his folded-up massage table and leather satchel leaned against the wall. They kissed again, promised to see each other soon, and he left.
Vanessa was still smiling when she closed the door. She went to the kitchen. An open bottle half-filled with red wine stood on the counter. She poured some into a glass, sipped it as she leaned back against the edge of the counter, cold on her hips.
Vanessa Peterman liked sex. It was something she got plenty of—she had a number of men with whom she’d developed friendly, casual sexual relationships. Nothing serious, no commitments, no obligations, just occasional dates followed by romps either in their beds or hers. Friends with benefits. Vanessa knew she was attractive, which made the sex easier to get. She saw no reason why she shouldn’t get as much as she wanted as long as she was capable, while she was still young, while men still found her appealing, and while she was still emotionally unattached. She had not been raised with any religious beliefs, so she felt no guilt about it. She knew women who were so screwed up by religion that they felt guilty having sex with their own husbands! But not Vanessa—she didn’t care whose husband he was.
She loved everything about sex equally. She was as fond of kissing as she was of actual intercourse. She was a foreplay junkie. At work, she thought of sex often, and each thought made her warm between her legs. Sometimes she wore no underwear and enjoyed the feeling of her clothes rubbing against her naked flesh. She was always eager to try new things, and new men.
As she sipped her wine, she thought about tomorrow. Things she had to do. She remembered that she was seeing Hugh tomorrow during lunch.
Hugh. She wondered if he were going to be a problem. The jealousy he’d expressed when she’d told him she had plans and couldn’t see him worried her a little. Jealousy was a sign of possessiveness, and Vanessa did not like possessiveness at all, not in anyone, but especially in her men. She avoided possessive men the way she avoided religious programming on TV. No one possessed her. They could hold her, have their way with her, if she so desired, but they could not possess her.
She decided she would have to see how things went tomorrow. If it became necessary, she would simply let Hugh go.
Vanessa owned a popular music and video store in Big Rock—people came from all directions to the Flaming Disc. Ever since she’d opened the place, she’d made an effort to carry hard-to-find films and recordings, foreign stuff, old stuff. It was a hip place to shop for CDs and DVDs, even vinyl records, and part of the store’s charm was that if it did not carry what you were looking for, it would find it for you. Another part of the store’s charm was Vanessa herself. From the beginning, she was the face and voice of the store. She used to appear in her own late-night TV commercials—for awhile, she’d sponsored a late-night double feature of old movies on a local independent station. She’d advertised the sales at Flaming Disc, and scattered in a few comments about the movie that was playing—like the fact that it could be found at Flaming Disc. She’d stopped doing the commercials last year because she didn’t need to anymore. The store was so popular, she was about to open another one in Redding.
These days, she didn’t work as much as she used to—she had a very loose work schedule that allowed her to pursue ... other pursuits.
No one possessed Vanessa. No one ever had, and if she could help it, no one ever would. Hugh would have to understand that.<
br />
She had proven to herself—the only person who really mattered, as far as she was concerned—that she did not need anyone else. Her business had been successful because of her, no one else, because of her hard work, no one else’s.
She raised her glass in a little toast to herself, tipped it back and finished the wine, then went to the bathroom to brush her teeth before bed.
18
Walking Cosmo
Patrick Hollenbeck opened his front door with one hand, and held Cosmo’s leash with the other. His right hand wore a plastic glove with which to pick up and dispose of Cosmo’s droppings. The small porch was dark, so he reached in and flicked on the porch light, then he pulled the door closed and checked to make sure it was locked.
It was a cold, misty night, with a light drizzle in the air, not the kind of night Patrick would care to be out in, but Cosmo had his needs before bed. Cosmo was a black-and-rust-colored mutt, a big walking mop with a jaunty step and a tongue-dangling smile for everyone.
Patrick struggled with the latch of the front gate, which had been sticking lately, opened it, and then went out onto the sidewalk. He closed the gate behind him and they turned right—turning left would take them to the intersection of Magnolia and Manzanita, while turning right gave them a whole block to walk. Cosmo trotted happily ahead of him.
Patrick was a thirty-eight year old bachelor with a successful mobile home repair business who lived in a two-bedroom house on the corner of Magnolia and Manzanita in a nice neighborhood in Big Rock. He had a lovely girlfriend named Nadine; his parents were healthy; he was close to his younger sister. Patrick was a pretty happy guy—happy with his life, with himself. He was upbeat guy other people liked to be around; he elevated the mood when he entered any room.
Each block in that neighborhood had two streetlights, and the first one was coming up. Its yellowish light had a halo of mist around it. As Cosmo led him through the pool of light, Patrick looked ahead and saw a dark figure walking toward them. The figure was all the way across Ivy and on the next block, walking rapidly. As the dark figure stepped into a pool of light, Patrick laughed a barking laugh that echoed in the night—the man walking rapidly toward him was completely naked. Although that moment of illumination was brief, Patrick was certain that the man was not wearing any clothes.
The naked man reached the end of the block, crossed Ivy, and stepped up onto Patrick’s block. As he passed beneath the streetlight at that end of the block, Patrick flinched. Suddenly, the man was wearing a full suit of dark clothes. Or ... was that some kind of dark coat? Even his face looked dark. He even seemed ... taller. Patrick frowned and quickly questioned what he had seen earlier. He was certain the man had been naked—he’d seen it clearly. Now, he appeared to be wearing something. Where had it come from? What was it? It didn’t look quite right for a suit of clothes. As the man continued to walk toward him, Patrick squinted a little. With the other streetlights behind him, Patrick saw only a dark silhouette—what appeared to be a rather shaggy silhouette.
Cosmo stopped at a crepe myrtle tree, sniffed around, then stopped and lifted his head. The dog looked down the sidewalk and sniffed the air with minute nods of his head. Patrick held the leash, but instead of watching Cosmo, his head remained turned to the right to look down the sidewalk.
Then something strange happened. The man hunched forward and walked that way for a few steps. Then he dropped forward until he was down on all fours.
My God, is that some kind of ... monkey? Patrick thought.
It did not look quite like a monkey—but then, it did not quite look like a man on all fours, either.
It was moving faster. A lot faster.
Cosmo growled, and his growl became more intense as the figure neared.
Patrick felt a shudder of fear of the unknown, because he didn’t know what he was seeing. Whatever it was, it was getting closer, and it was bigger than Patrick first had thought. A lot bigger.
Cosmo began to bark, then he pulled the leash taut and tugged on Patrick’s arm—going back toward the house. Cosmo was afraid and wanted to get out of there. Patrick had never seen the dog so adamant about going back home. He looked over his shoulder. The low figure loped quickly toward him, almost on him.
He saw fangs, a gaping maw of fangs.
Patrick began to run, and Cosmo ran with him.
Something turned Patrick’s blood to ice water with the sudden awareness that although he knew the thing behind them was rapidly catching up, he could hear nothing, not a footfall, not a breath.
At the gate, Patrick reached over and found the latch, and tried to jerk it aside, but it stuck. It would rattle, but it would not slide, it would not, and Patrick mustered the courage to turn his head to the left. The loping figure was upright now. Patrick saw that nightmare of fangs again, and something heavy and strong slammed into him.
Patrick felt nothing but pain after that. It rose up and slammed down on his fear, overpowering it with agony. He screamed high and shrill scream, but his cry was abruptly cut off as jagged teeth sank into his throat and tore viciously. Making horrible gargling sounds, he choked on his own blood, which quickly filled up his throat and poured out his mouth.
Patrick’s violent death was prolonged. He did not die quickly, or easily. He felt a lifetime of pain and agony in those final minutes.
Meanwhile, once Patrick had released Cosmo’s leash, the dog had kept running. He’d already run across Manzanita and was well into the next block, dragging his rattling leash behind him.
Cosmo had been so badly terrified by what he’d smelled that he did not pause to look back, not once.
19
Night Call
Hurley parked the Explorer at the curb on Magnolia a few minutes before midnight. There were already two cruisers there, as well as the coroner’s pewter-colored van. He yawned as he killed the engine. The SUV’s heater worked well and it was nice and warm inside. As he sipped coffee from a silver traveling cup, Hurley realized how much he did not want to leave the inside of that vehicle. He’d just drifted into a deep sleep when Deputy Kopechne called earlier. His eyes felt puffy and he could not stop yawning—he did it again as he got out of the SUV. He walked over to the body, where three deputies and George Purdy stood talking. The body was covered with a green tarp. They fell silent and turned to Hurley.
“Kopechne ... Garvin ... Wiley,” Hurley said with a nod. “Hello, George.” He sipped coffee from his cup.
George said, “Sheriff, did you talk to Fish and Game about my conclusions regarding your deputy’s body?”
“I did. I spoke to Lenny Hill.” He told George that Lenny had checked the area and found no signs of any large animals whatsoever.
George nodded. “Yeah, I don’t suppose Lenny would find any signs of large animals around here, either, but I’ll tell ya, that doesn’t mean much.” George bent down and grabbed the corner of the tarp and peeled it back.
Hurley winced and gasped when he saw the shredded, eviscerated, blood-soaked body. It was impossible, at first glance, to determine the corpse’s sex.
“Oh, Christ,” Hurley whispered. “Oooh, dear Christ,” he barked, turning away from the body, hands on his hips. He turned to George then. “What ... what the hell are we dealing with, here?”
“I gotta get him on the table before I can even guess,” George said, “but this looks exactly like Deputy Garrett’s body. I bet I’ll find the same fang marks on this guy.”
“You’re sure they were fangs?” Hurley said.
“They were either fangs or long, slightly curved, sharply-pointed teeth.”
Hurley’s eyebrows huddled together. “That’s ... the same thing.”
“My point exactly.” He stepped closer to Hurley and lowered his voice. “Listen, Ferrell. It’s not like someone put on some artificial fangs and went to work on this guy. I mean, hell, that wouldn’t even work. The positioning of the teeth, the shape of the jaw—there’s no way a human being could fake that, Ferrell.” George hunker
ed down beside the corpse and turned his flashlight onto it. “Look at this, the same as before—the throat, the abdomen. It’s almost identical to—”
When George said nothing more for a long moment, Hurley said, “What’s wrong?”
“Found something.”
Hurley hunkered down at George’s side.
George took a pen from his pocket and pointed at a small, dark tuft of fur caught on the zipper of the man’s jacket. “Anybody got a baggie?”
A moment later, one of the deputies came to him with a small plastic evidence bag. George put away his pen, took a long pair of tweezers from his pocket, then carefully plucked the tuft of fur off the zipper. He dropped the fur in the bag, then stood as he put away the tweezers. He offered the bag to Hurley.
“You think that came off a person?” George said.
“Okay,” Hurley said quietly, taking the baggie. “Maybe Lenny doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
“The lab in Eureka will be able to tell you what kind of animal it is from this fur, or from saliva found on the corpse. I’d take the lab results over anything Lenny says.”
Hurley handed the baggie to a passing deputy and said, “Give this to someone in the Eureka Crime Scene Unit when they get here.” He turned to Deputy Kopechne. “Any witnesses?”
“The people in the next house made the call when they heard a man screaming,” Kopechne said. “I’m sure they weren’t the only ones. We haven’t canvassed the neighborhood yet.”
“That house there?” Hurley said, pointing.
“Yes.”
Hurley walked down the sidewalk to the next house. There was no fence around the yard, just a concrete path that cut across the lawn to the small screened-in porch. Hurley tried the screen door, but it was locked. He knocked hard on the door’s frame and called, “Hello?”
A moment later, the front door opened and a man in a robe came out and stood at the screen door. “Yes?” he said.
